【Preface】

‘Cherish one’s own beauty, respect other’s beauty, and when both beauties are respected and cherished, the world will become one”（各美其美，美人之美，美美与共，天下大同——费孝通）, said Fei Xiaotong, a famous Chinese sociologist at a cerebration party in honor of his eightieth birthday about thirty years ago. In a time of growing interest in intercultural communication today, these words sound especially wise and far sighted. Translation, as one of the most important means for cultural communication, is usually done into one’s mother tongue from other languages by native translators. This largely guarantees the quality of translated text, so far as the linguistic readability is concerned. However, this method implies a one-sidedness in correspondence, as only the translator’s ‘respect for other’s beauty” is concerned, regardless, though not completely, of how the local people look upon and cherish their own beauty. It should be compensated by translations on the other way, that is, works selected, interpreted, and translated by the local people themselves into languages other than their own. This approach may go directly against the prevalent views in modern translation theories but, in my opinion, is worthy of practicing. It is perhaps an even more effective way to bring about successful communication in cultures, and the beauties of the world can really be shared by the world’s people. It is with such understanding that the Shanghai Foreign Languages Education Press is organizing a new series of books, entitled Readings of Chinese Culture, to introduce Chinese culture, past and present, to the world, with works selected and translated by the Chinese scholars and translators. 

The series will cover a wide range of writings including but not restricted to works of different literary genres. For the first batch, we are glad to provide three books of essays and two books of short stories, all written by authors of the 20th century. They will be continued by a batch of serious academic writings on premodern Chinese classics in philosophy, literature, and historiography, written by influential scholars of our time. Later, we will offer more books on classical Chinese drama, classical Chinese poetry, etc. 

Some of the books in the series have been published before, but they have been revised and rearranged for the new purpose to meet the current needs of broader readers. We are looking forward to hear comments and suggestions on the series for future improvement.

【译者简介/About the translator

徐英才，原上海复旦大学英语教师，在复旦任职十多年，曾于1984年被派往加拿大麦克马斯特大学授课并研读加拿大文学上世纪90年代初，赴美国德堡大学留学，研读英美文学，毕业后留校工作。目前教学课程包括‘汉英英汉翻译实践与理论”‘中国书法实践与理论”‘中国电影史”‘中国当代文学”等。已出版的译著有《英译唐宋八大家散文精选》《英译中国当代美文选》《英译中国经典散文选》等。

Xu Yingcai used to be an English teacher at Fudan University Shanghai, where he had pursued his educational career for over a decade. In 1984 he was sent to teach at McMaster University, Canada, and study Canadian literature. In the early 1990s he went to DePaul University, USA, to study English literature. After graduation, he began to work there. At present, he teaches a variety of courses including Translation Chinese to/from English, Chinese Calligraphy-Practice and Theory, Chinese Cinema, Chinese Literature etc. He has published translation works A Selection from the Eight Great Prose Masters of the Tang and Song Dynasties, Selected Works of Contemporary Chinese Prose, and Selected Works or Classical Chinese Prose.

Snow

An Autumn Night

The Cicada

The Wild Wood in Spring

Pear Blossoms

Claver on Sojourning in the Hills of Florence

Rain

Winter Scenes of the South

I Have Run Head-on into Autumn

Greenness

A Lotus Pool in the Moonlight

A Red Leaf

Evening and Morning Views from a Ferry

Lamplights

Myriad Stars

The Hen

The Pavilion of Cherished Dusk

Before the Rain Arrives

Ode to Camellias

The Beach on a Midsummer Night

A Humorous Analogy for Prose

Buddhist Pilgrims-Travelogues of Mount Tai in the Old Days: Story One

Nuorilang Falls in the Morning and at Dusk

The Backs of the Best Musical Conductors

The Lily in My Heart

Perception of Spring

The Eagle in My Heart

The Sea in My Eyes

In the Hometown of the Daffodils

The Many-Hued (Two Supplementary Chapters)

The Parable of the Hillock

Family, Night, and the Sun

Haloes

The Moon over Mount Orchid

Journals from America(Excerpts)

An Afternoons Sporadic Clarinet Chanting

When Summer Is Here

Lights

A Hometown Visit

The Expected Return Home

The Old House

A Life That Never Matures

Watching Stars from a Roof

A Clipping about Winter

In Honor of Moon light

The Autumn Rain and the Mountain Forest

Lifelong Lament

Going North

Anxiety Pacified

The Howling Northwest Wind

The Rainy Season

Summer and Autumn

Mother

The Full Nighttime Is Yours

The Sluggish Wei River

A Dusk of My Own

Enlightenment

The Mighty Pass

The Past Is a Boiled Silk Cocoon

An Age of Lost Childlike Innocence (Excerpts)

Counterfeits

The Revelation of a soul

A Trace Remains When a Bird Is Gone

Night at the Summer Palace

Looking for the Lady with the Dog

The Walking Stick of the Founding Father of the Multicolored Mosque

The Reed Marshes at the Estuary of the Yangtze River

Aerial Roots