Source: Asian Review of Books — review of Michael Keevak, "On Saving Face: A Brief History of Western Appropriation"
- Title: "On Saving Face: A Brief History of Western Appropriation" by Michael Keevak
- Publication: Asian Review of Books (review of Keevak's 2022 book, Hong Kong University Press)
- URL: https://asianreviewofbooks.com/on-saving-face-a-brief-history-of-western-appropriation-by-michael-keevak/
- Type: secondary (book review, summarizing an academic monograph); stance critical/skeptical of Western appropriation, not of the underlying history
- Accessed: 2026-09-03
Extract
- Reports that "lose face" derives via pidgin English from Chinese diu lian / diu mianzi — a calque/loan translation — and that the phrase was already in pidgin-English use by the 1830s, a full generation before the specific 1876/1899 citations reported by phrasesorguk-lose-face-save-face.md.
- Reports that "save face" has no identifiable Chinese antecedent: "a foreign invention," coined in English by analogy to the borrowed "lose face," a fact the review says the OED itself has acknowledged in past editions ("the exact phrase appears not to occur in Chinese").
- Reports Keevak's central historical claim: the reverse direction of borrowing is also documented — the English-coined "save face" was reimported into Chinese by early-20th-century Chinese writers, itself "as much a response to Western discourse as... any sort of direct borrowing."
- Reports Keevak's broader argument: 19th–20th-century Western commentators (missionaries, traders, colonial officials) treated Chinese "face" as an exotic marker of Chinese difference from the West, using the concept polemically to justify imperialism, even as the English vocabulary for it was itself partly a Western invention rather than a faithful import.
- Notes that both phrases are now fully naturalized into ordinary English, divorced from their Chinese origin in most speakers' awareness.
Gaps
- A review, not the monograph itself — Keevak's book has not been read directly by this project; specific citations/dates in the book (e.g. the exact 1830s pidgin-English attestation) are reported only via this review, not verified against Keevak's own sourcing.
- The claimed "reimportation into Chinese" of "save face" is a strong, specific historical claim not cross-checked this session against a Chinese-language source.