【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】

张德劭

文学博士，华东师范大学国际汉语文化学院副教授。研究兴趣为汉语文字学与古文字学。

Zhang Deshao, Ph. D, is an associate professor of English and Chinese in the School of International Chinese Studies, East China Normal University China. His research interest covers Chinese grammatology and paleography.

Introduction

Chapter One

 Choice Blossoms of Literature and Anthologies of Ancient Poetry and Prose

 1.. The Origins and Illustrations of Ancient Anthologies of Literature

 2.. From General Anthology of Poetry and Prose to Collection of Essays and Poems

 3. Choice Blossoms of Literature and The Quintessence of the Tang Poetry and Prose

Chapter Two

 Choice Blossoms of Literature and General Anthologies of Poetry and Prose in the Tang Dynasty

 1. The Contemporary Selections of the Tang Poetry

 2. The Premodern Anthologies of the Tang Poetry

 3. Brief Introduction to the General Anthologies of the Tang Prose

Chapter Three

 The Literary Documentary Value of Choice Blossoms ofLiterature

1. The Documentary Value of Choice Blossoms of Literature

2. The Collected Works of Fannan and the Evolution of the Parallel Prose

Chapter Four

 The Tang Poetry as a Model and the Trends of the Premodern Poems

 1. The Song Poetry: Its Initial Imitation of the Tang Poetry and Its Eventual Departure

 2. The Poetic Circles in the Jin, Yuan Ming and Qing Dynasties: The Growth and Decline of the Tang and Song Poetry

Chapter Five

 The Influence of the Tang-Song Prose on the Premodern Literary Circles 

 1. The Tang-Song Classical Prose Movements as a Continuum

 2. A Debate on the Tang-Song Prose and the Qin-Han Prose, and Their Connection

Appendices

 I.Bibliography

 II.Glossary