Classical Chinese Literature Research Articles

Istoriia kitaiskoi klassicheskoi literatury s drevnosti i do XIII veka: Poeziia, Proza. (History of Chinese Classical Literature from Antiquity to the 13th Century: Poetry, Prose), written by By Marina E. Kravtsova and Igor A. Alimov

Istoriia kitaiskoi klassicheskoi literatury s drevnosti i do XIII veka: Poeziia, Proza. (History of Chinese Classical Literature from Antiquity to the 13th Century: Poetry, Prose), written by By Marina E. Kravtsova and Igor A. Alimov

Translating the socialist nation

Abstract The first seventeen years of the People’s Republic of China (PRC, 1949–1966) was a critical period for the newly established nation to gain international recognition. The period witnessed a unique translation activity, i.e. SL-generated translation of a large number of classical and modern Chinese literature into English and other foreign languages. These state-sponsored translations were mainly undertaken by teams of Chinese and foreign translators in the Foreign Languages Press (FLP) in Beijing. This paper aims to explore how literary translation was used for nation branding and promoting Chinese communism abroad. It reveals the political agenda behind the outward translation activity. It goes on to probe into the patronage of the FLP to disclose the relationship between the translating institution and the political discourse on the nation. Lastly, the study of the English translation of Linhai Xueyuan (林海雪原), i.e. Tracks in the Snowy Forest, a bestseller representative of the ‘revolutionary novel’ of the time, will show that the adaptations aim at recasting revolutionary characters as “perfect” heroes so as to project an ideal image of the modern Chinese nation. The paper concludes with a call to integrate outward translation into TS. Based on Luhmann’s sociology of communication it provides a preliminary observation on the reception of the PRC’s export enterprise, which, more often than not, turned out to be counterproductive.

Hermann Hesse’s concept of world literature and his critique on Chinese literature

Hermann Hesse drafted in 1927 an outline of world literature in his article Eine Bibliothek der Weltliteratur (A Library of World Literature) in which he took Chinese literature as one of the important sources. In 1935, from German translation of historical novel Water Margins (水浒传) Hesse gave a response to Goethe’s ideal of world literature and defined it as the last common spirit “through empathetic translation, to broaden and enrich one’s own language and literature”. Chinese literature playing this landmark role in Hesse’s world literature is not groundless, but closely related with his continuous reading, commenting on a variety of Chinese literature for 30 years in his early career. He praised the perfect form of Chinese poetry, and ascribed Chinese drama to a treasure of stage art. He argued Chinese short narration with the magic to transform freely and broke through reality and illusion. Hesse also evaluated three Chinese romantic fictions The Fortunate Union (好逑传), The Wonder of the Second-Plum (二度梅) and The Plum in the Golden Vase (金瓶梅). He commented twice on the masterpiece Dream of the Red Chamber (红楼梦), initially criticized it was not a classic because it embodied no Chinese wisdom, only afterwards reaffirmed that it was a masterpiece depicting “a mood of decline and fatigue”. Hesse’s critique on Chinese classical literature not only provides a vision of literary communication between the East and the West, it is also closely related with his cultivation of world literature, which greatly enriches the construction of “world literature” in the early twentieth century.

Reflection and Revelation of the Time Travel Theme in Different Media

Since the beginning of this century, the mainland art circles have set off a “time travel” wave across the network, printing, film, television, games and other media. It has been a part of both the Chinese classical literature and the world since 1960s. The time travel online novels are the pioneers of “time travel” in China, and demonstrate some features, showing the youth of network literature, historical consumerism, martial arts complex, media interactivity and so on. By reflecting the “time travel” theme in our country, we know that it breaks through the traditional narrative skill about time, and escapes from reality by personal fantasy and limits of the theme of the palace fighting. By means of relying on the story, returning to reality, breaking the theme can we give the topic a better future.

Maskulinitas dalam sastra dan agama di Tiongkok

This study aims to describe masculinity in literature and religion of China. The focus of this study are (1) how is the representation of masculinity in literature and religion in China, (2) how is the representation of the other side of masculinity literature and religion in China, and (3) how is masculinity literature and religion in relation to the relevance of social life in China nowaday. The theory used in this study is masculinity. This study used a qualitative descriptive method-style narrative and autoethnography exposure. Source of data used in the form of (1) literature study classical Chinese literature (Journey to the West, Story Classical Ming Dynasty, and The Plum in the Golden Vase or, CHIN P ‘ING MEI Volume 1: The Gathering) and (2) autoethnography. The results show that masculinity in literature and religion in China is very strong. Masculinity in literature and religion in China comes in the form of leadership, courage, and responsibility; (2) the other side of masculinity literature and religion in China, namely concubinage and dominance in leadership; and (3) the masculinity literature and religion in relation to the relevance of public life represented that China upholds masculinity that looked at the country’s leadership, the leadership of the household, and religious leadership.

Exploring the Efficiency of Classical Chinese Literature Research -Based on the Semantic Web-

Exploring the Efficiency of Classical Chinese Literature Research -Based on the Semantic Web-

A Matter of Life and Death: The Translator Fou Lei

A Matter of Life and Death:The Translator Fou Lei John Minford (bio) Mingyuan Hu. Fou Lei: An Insistence on Truth. Leiden: Brill, 2017. x, 251 pp. Hardcover $165.00, ISBN 978-90-04-34391-7. Fou Lei 傅雷 (1908–1966)1 was the celebrated translator who brought to Chinese readers numerous masterpieces of French literature, including works by Romain Rolland, Balzac, Voltaire and Hippolyte Taine. He spent three and a half years as an idealistic and adventurous young man in France, Switzerland and Italy, from 1928 to 1931, before returning to Shanghai and launching himself into a prolific career as a cultural critic and translator, becoming one of China's leading public men of letters. After 1949, like so many Chinese intellectuals and creative artists of his generation, he was courted by the new regime (a courting made easier by his own wishful thinking), and during the early 1950s he made ever more strenuous efforts to be accepted by the new cultural commissars. He sincerely hoped that he might be allowed to play a genuine role in the New China, provided he could appear to believe in its underlying ideology (even partially), and could be seen to help to promote it. After a few years of this fruitless self-abasement he was, like thousands of others, rejected and ultimately destroyed in the double holocaust of the Anti-Rightist Purge of 1957 and the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Early in September 1966, after three days of relentless verbal and physical abuse from the Red Guards of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, he and his wife Zhu Meifu 朱梅馥 committed suicide in their Shanghai home. His poignant life-story mirrors the destiny of countless Chinese intellectuals caught in the meshes of the ruthless party-state. Fou is most widely known today in the Chinese-speaking world for the posthumous best-selling volume Letters to Fou Ts'ong (Fulei Jiashu 傅雷家書), consisting of letters he and his wife wrote to their talented older son Fou Ts'ong 傅聰, who after a period studying the piano in Warsaw (having won third prize in the 1955 Chopin Competition) sought refuge in London in late 1958. Fou Ts'ong went on to become one of the leading concert pianists of his time, acclaimed especially for his performances of the Chopin Mazurkas.2 The Letters were edited and published in Hong Kong and China by the couple's second son Fu Min 傅敏, using material he collected from his brother's London home.3 They are a moving testimony to the inner life of a tormented [End Page 77] Chinese intellectual under the yoke of Communism. Hu Mingyuan, in this remarkable new study, quotes extensively from the Letters, which she perceptively characterizes as "an epic poem from beginning to end." I am taking the liberty to append to this review-essay a few examples from the aborted translation of the Letters themselves. From this sampling of the dialogue Fou Lei conducted with his brilliant young son, readers can form a first-hand impression of his character, which can serve as a counterpoint to Hu Mingyuan's critical study, placing it in an intimate personal context.4 The Letters vividly illustrate the evolution of Fou Lei's thinking during the mid-1950s, crucial years in the establishment of the new party-state and its cultural policies. In 1954–1955, immediately after Fou Ts'ong's departure for Poland, Fou père sought tirelessly to share with him the fundamentals of Chinese and European philosophy and aesthetics—sending him carefully selected Chinese books and quoting passages from the great Chinese poets. The Letters are peppered with references to classical Chinese literature and philosophy, which is one reason why translating them required the copious addition of footnotes (which I have abbreviated here). In addition to this classical background, there was also the need for the translator to sketch in for the lay reader the fraught political landscape of the years 1954–1958, against which Fou Lei was writing. The heavy-handed denunciation in 1954 of Yu Pingbo 俞平伯 (1900–1990), one of China's most distinguished literary scholars, and the 1955 Purge of the writer Hu Feng 胡風 (1902–1985) loom darkly behind the Letters. Despite...

Literary Collections Compilation during Japanese Colonial Rule, and Situations of Daegu and Gyeongbuk Region

본고는 일제강점기 문집 편찬의 전국적 상황을 개괄한 다음, 특히 대구･ 경북지역의 실상과 특징을 보다 자세히 살펴보고자 한 것이다. 전국적 상황을 살펴본 결과, 한문시대가 끝난 것으로 간주해온 1900년 이후 오히려 이전보다 많은 문집이 간행된 사실을 확인할 수 있었다. 간행 주체는 대부분 서당에서 공부한 위정척사 계열의 학자들이었고, 간행 대상은 신라부터 일제강점 당대에 이르기까지 유명한 인물의 문집을 두루 망라하였다. 그리고 이전에 간행한 것을 중간하기도 하고, 미처 간행하지 못한 것을 신간하기도 하는 등 다른 어떤 시대보다 활발한 간행양상을 보였다. 대구･경북지역의 경우, 위정척사 계열의 학자가 다른 어떤 지역보다 많았다. 그래서 이들 또한 문집 간행에 적극 나섰다. 시기적으로는 신라부터 한말까지를 두루 포괄 하였고, 인물형에 있어서도 관료 학자 문장가 등을 가리지 않았다. 그리고 문집 편찬을 주도한 인물은 자신이 곧 문집을 남긴 주인공이기도 하였다.그래서 이들이 남긴 문집을 별도로 검토해본 결과 몇 가지 흥미로운 점이 있었다. 지역별로는 유명 학자의 근거지였던 안동 봉화 칠곡 성주 영천 지역 문집이 특히 많았고, 간행 시기는 광복 이전보다 이후가 오히려 일반적 이었으며, 간행형태는 소규모 석인본의 비중이 높았다. 수록 내용에 있어서도 表箋 狀啓 對策 등 몇 가지 문체는 완전히 사라졌고, 관습적인 시문과 편지의 비중이 높아졌으며, 새로운 시대상을 반영한 글이 추가되기도 하였 다. 이런 사실을 종합적으로 고려할 때 일제강점기를 한문시대가 끝난 것으로 간주하는 관점은 수정할 필요가 있을 듯하였다. 간행한 문집의 총량, 간행 대상으로 삼은 인물의 비중, 문집의 형태와 내용상의 변화 등 여러 면에서 독자적인 가치가 충분하기 때문이다. 따라서 일제강점기는 국문과 한문의 역할이 근본적으로 바뀌어가는 과도기로 보는 것이 바람직할 것으로 판단되며, 이런 관점에서 양자의 서로 다른 역할과 상호작용을 함께 주목할 필요가 있을 듯하다.This study examines the nationwide literary collection compilation situations during the Japanese colonial rule of Korea, and takes a close look at the situations and characteristics of Daegu and Gyeongbuk region in this regard. The examination of nationwide situations found that, after the 1900s, when the Chinese classics era presumably ended, rather than before, more literary collections were published. They were mostly published by scholars of the Wijeongcheoksa (Pro-Neo-Confucianism Movement) who studied Chinese classics at Seodang schools. Publications covered a wide range of literary collections by famous figures from Silla to the Japanese colonial rule. And, some previous publications were republished, and others were newly published, all suggesting active publication activities. The Daegu and Gyeongbuk region had more Wijeongcheoksa scholars than other regions. They thus were positive in publishing literary collections. The publication of literary collections widely covered Silla to the time of Japanese colonial rule, and covered diverse figures from government officers to scholars to writers. Those who led the compilation of literary collections were those who authored the literary collections. The examination of such literary collections revealed a few interesting things.By region, there were many literary collections which were produced in Andong, Bonghwa, etc. which were home to many famous scholars, and by publication time, more publications were made after the liberation of Korea than before it. Publication pattern was that the rate of small-scale lithographic printing versions was high. Of recorded contents, certain writing styles of the previous times completely disappeared, the rate of customary poems and letters was high, and writings of new times were added, indicating many changes. Putting together all this, the viewpoint that the Chinese classic era ended by the time of Japanese colonial rule needs to be revised. The transit time when the roles of Korean language and classic Chinese literature fundamentally changed should be set up to pay attention to the interaction thereof.

Research and Discussion on the Stereotyped Writing Criticism Genre during Late Ming and Early Qing Dynasties

In this paper, we conduct research on the stereotyped writing criticism genre during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Ming and Qing dynasty, especially in middle Qing dynasty literature in almost all areas have made great progress that make the various forms of genre of Chinese classical literature have been into the comprehensive prosperity. The rhythm of the eight-part essay writing features can also be of composition structure shift from above, the inversion analysis of rhythm of the reasonable explanation. Eight-part essays writing have speaking format, the arrangement of each part of the article structure and should be treated according to certain programs. This paper integrates the related result to propose the new idea on the stereotyped writing criticism genre that propose the novel perspective for the related research areas.

上元夫人：從升仙導師到多情仙姝———道教對中國小説文體發展的貢獻

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.
 《漢武帝内傳》是早期道教綜合經典傳授、仙藥授受、修道方式和相關古老傳説等諸多要素形成的經典，也被看做具有相當藝術水準的志怪小説作品。女仙上元夫人是這部作品裏的主角之一，以西王母配角身份出現。她接受西王母教示，訓誨漢武帝，向他傳授經戒，是人間帝王的升仙導師。到唐代，在李白等人的詩裏，特别是在裴鉶《傳奇》的《封陟》篇裏，她完全脱卸了神仙面貌，被表現爲一位執著、坦率地追求愛情的多情仙姝。南北朝時期流傳一批西王母女兒（養女）或隨侍降臨（謫降）人世、與人間男子結下姻緣的傳説，從側面提供了這一演變的根據和脈絡。在道教“世俗化”、“藝術化”過程中，從《漢武帝内傳》到《封陟》裏上元夫人形象的這一演變提供了一個典型例子，體現道教對於中國小説文體發展所發揮的重要作用，也是道教影響古代文學發展的一例。
 The Inner Biography of Emperor Wu of the Han is an early Daoist scripture that contains elements of scriptural transmission, bestowal of transcendent elixir, cultivation methods, and relevant legends of ancient times. It is also regarded as a fiction of “recording the uncanny” with a high level of aesthetic accomplishment. In the book, the transcendent Lady High Prime is one of the main characters; she debuts in a supporting role of Queen Mother of the West, under the instruction of whom the Lady teaches Emperor Wu of the Han (156 BC-87 BC; r. 141 BC-87 BC) and transmits scriptural teaching and rules. Therefore, she is the teacher of the transcendence-seeking emperor of the human world. In the Tang, however, in the poetry of Li Bai and others, as well as in the “Feng Zhi” story in Chuanqi (Transmission of the Marvels) by Pei Xing, she is depicted as having sloughed off her guise as a transcendent and become a nymph who chastely and straightforwardly pursues love. Relevant legends in circulation during the Northern and Southern dynasties period tell stories about the adopted daughters or attendant maids who descended (or were demoted) to the human world and fell in love with mortal men. They offer an indirect outline of the source and development of this tradition. When Daoism underwent the processes of “secularization” and “becoming an artful representation,” we find a typical example in the changes in the image of Lady High Prime as seen in the Inner Biography of Emperor Wu of the Han and the “Feng Zhi” story. This example illustrates an important impact that Daoism had on the development of Chinese fiction genres. It is also an example of how Daoism influenced classical Chinese literature.

Contributors

Other| November 01 2016 Contributors Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture (2016) 3 (2): 471–474. https://doi.org/10.1215/23290048-3715791 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Contributors. Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture 1 November 2016; 3 (2): 471–474. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/23290048-3715791 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsJournal of Chinese Literature and Culture Search Advanced Search LEONARD KWOK KOU CHAN is the chair professor of Chinese literature and the director of the Research Center of Chinese Literature and Literary Culture at the Education University of Hong Kong. He specializes in literary historiography, classical Chinese literature, and Hong Kong literature. He is the chief editor of the twelve-volume Compendium of Hong Kong Literature 1919–1949 香港文學大系1919–1949 (2014–16). His other recent publications include Hong Kong Literature in Its History of Lyricism 香港的抒情史 (2016), Literature as Knowledge? Literary Criticism, Literary Studies 文學如何成為知識？——文學批評、文學研究與文學教育 (2013) and Modernity of Lyricism: Essays on Chinese Lyrical Tradition 抒情之現代性：「抒情傳統」論述與中國文學研究 (2014, coedited with David Der-wei Wang).KANG-I SUN CHANG, the inaugural Malcolm G. Chace ’56 Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale University, is a scholar of classical Chinese literature with an interest in comparative studies of poetry, literary criticism, gender studies, and cultural theory/aesthetics. Born in Beijing, China, Chang attended schools in Taiwan before... You do not currently have access to this content.

Review of Classical Korean Literature Studies from a history-of-Civilization’s perspective

본고는 한국한문학 연구의 역사를 문명사적 관점에서 검토해 본 개략적인 글이다. 한국 한문학의 역사를 창작의 시대와 연구의 시대로 양대분했을 때 이는 문명사가 동아시아 중심 질서에서 서구 중심적 근대로의 전환을 의미한다고 보고, 여기에 근거하여 한문학 연구시대의 역사를 다시 크게 세 시기로 구분하였다. 제1기는 서구의 근대적 문학관에 한국적 國字 기준을 더하여 국문학의 개념을 정립하던 시기이다. 이 시기 한문학은 본격문학이 아닌 準國文學의 지위에 있었으며, 한문학 연구는 한학에 조예가 있는 학자들에 의해 漢文學史書 형태로 전개되었다. 대표적인 예로 선정한 鄭萬朝의 朝鮮詩文變遷은 중화주의와 유교주의에 입각하였고, 金台俊의 朝鮮漢文學史 는 철저한 문학주의에 중화주의가 결합되었으며, 李家源의 韓國漢文學史 는 한 국한문학의 국문문학과의 대등의식, 중국문학과의 대등의식을 천명하였다. 제2기는 한문교육의 제도화와 한문학의 국문학 내적 위상 재인식을 토대로 하여 한문학 연구가 본격적 궤도에 오른 시기이다. 이 시기의 연구를 세경향으로 정리하였다. 하나는 서구의 문학주의의 관점에서 한국한문학을 연구하고 평가하던 것이요, 다음은 중국문학과 한학적 관점에서 접근하고 이해하던 경향이었으며, 세 번째로 한문학사 연구에서 한국사회 지배세력 변천과정으로서의 역사학과 결부시키던 방법이었다. 이 중에서 서구 문학주의에 의한 접근이 비평론 분야에서 특히 두드러진 성과를 거두었음을 지적하였다. 제3기는 한국한문학을 포함한 어문학 전반의 경향이 문학주의로부터 탈피했던 시기이다. 문학주의의 탈피는 서구 중심적 질서, 근대적 가치체계로 부터의 벗어남이며 그 의미는 앞서와 마찬가지로 다분히 문명사의 전환을 뜻한다고 하겠다. 탈근대 이후의 동아시아적 가치는 기존에 중국을 중심으로 논의되었으나 본고는 동아시아 내에서 다시 한국 민족문화의 가치를 인정하고 그 발전 가능성을 모색하고자 하였다. 그 방법으로 한문교육 제도화초기에 발의되었던 민족문화란 개념을 다시 끌어내었다. 여기서 한중 문화 관계, 民族과 文化의 관계를 중시하고 그 주어로서의 ‘民族’에 비중을 두어논함으로써 한국한문학 연구가 문명사를 넘어 정신사의 차원에 서야 함을강조하고자 하였다.This essay is a brief description of reviewing a history of Classical Korean literature from a history-of-civilization’s perspective. If we divide the history of Classical Korean literature into two parts, the creation-oriented era and the study-oriented era, we assume that it indicates the conversion from East-Asian-centric order to Eurocentric order. Based on this assumption, we can subdivide the history of the study-oriented era into three periods. The first period is when the notion of national literature became established through uniting Korean national alphabet criteria with Western modern literary views. Classical Korean literature was not considered to be in good standing at this time within the Korean literary field but instead in a “quasi status.” The study of Classical Korean literature had been mainly carried on by scholars who had profound knowledge of Classical Chinese studies, and had produced related academic history books called “the history of Classical Chinese literature.” As the typical examples, Jung Manjo(鄭萬朝)’s The Transition of Joseon Literature(朝鮮詩文變遷) was grounded upon Sino-centrism and Confucian-centrism; Kim Taejun(金台俊)’s The History of Joseon Classical Literature(朝鮮漢文學史) combined Sino-centrism with thorough literary-centrism; Lee Gawon(李家源)’s The History of Korean Classical Literature(韓國漢文學史) accentuated that Classical Korean literature has equal status not only with Korean literature created in the Korean language, but also with Chinese literature. The second period is when the study of Classical Korean literature came into it s own, along with the institutionalization of Classical Korean literature education and a new understanding of Classical Korean literature’s increasing internal status within the Korean literary field. The related studies during this period can be further categorized into three parts: the first part tends to approach Classical Korean literature from a Western literary-centric perspective; the second part has a tendency to approach Classical Korean literature from a Chinese literary and Sinological perspective ; the third part integrates historical studies as a transitional process due to ruling groups in Korean society. From among these, the Western literary-centric approach has produced outstanding study results in literary criticism. The third period is when the overall language and literature field including Classical Korean literature broke away from literary-centrism. This extrication from literary-centrism signifies the extrication from Western-centric order or a modern value system. It can mean quite the transition of the aforementioned history-of-Civilization. We try to acknowledge Korean national value and to seek its potential for development while existing studies tend to discuss post-modern East Asian values from a Chinese-centric perspective. We dragged the notion of national culture out from the past again, which had been proposed at the early stage of institutionalization of Classical Korean literature education. We emphasized that, in the process of Korean-Chinese cultural relations and national(民 族)-cultural relations, we need to give weight to ‘nationality (民族)’ as a subject so that the study of Classical Korean literature can stand on its own from a spiritual historical study’s perspective, beyond the constraints of ‘history-of-Civilization.’

Tao Qian, the idea of garden as home, and the Utopian vision

Tao Qian or Tao Yuanming (365–427), one of the greatest poets in classical Chinese literature, has traditionally been regarded as “the paragon of hermit poets” for withdrawing himself from a minor office to be close to nature as a farmer, and for writing about his life in the country, about home-coming to his own garden, and about an imaginary ideal society in the “Peach Blossom Spring.” How do we understand Tao Qian and his poetry in the context of the Chinese literary tradition in general and of his own time—the Wei-Jin period—in particular? What is the significance of his idea of garden as home? And how does his work give expression to a Chinese vision of an ideal society? This essay will try to explore these questions and argue for the perennial appeal of the Utopian vision in China and beyond.

Categorical Approach to Modes of Expressions Quoting the Book of Songs in Korean Classical Chinese Literature - Synthesis and Extended Analysis of Existing Works -

Categorical Approach to Modes of Expressions Quoting the Book of Songs in Korean Classical Chinese Literature - Synthesis and Extended Analysis of Existing Works -

Memory Impairment, Dementia, and Alzheimer's Disease in Classical and Contemporary Traditional Chinese Medicine.

To identify and analyze records of the treatment of dementia and memory disorders in the classical Chinese medical literature that were consistent with the signs and symptoms of Alzheimer's disease (AD), with the aim of determining which traditional medicines have histories of use for these disorders. Encyclopedia of Traditional Chinese Medicine (Zhong Hua Yi Dian), a database of more than 1000 classical and premodern Chinese medical books, was systematically searched. Search terms were identified from dictionaries, medical nomenclatures, guidelines, and specialist clinical manuals on aging, neurology, or brain disorders. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were used to identify citations of conditions whose signs and symptoms were consistent with the clinical features of AD. Passages of text identified by these terms were copied to Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, together with the identity of the source book and all relevant information on the disorder and the intervention. Each distinct passage of text was considered a citation. The frequencies of the traditional formulas used as interventions and their constituent ingredients were calculated. The selection criteria identified 1498 citations of dementia and memory impairments derived from 277 different books written from circa 363 to 1945 AD. In 91 of these citations, memory impairment was associated with aging and was broadly consistent with the clinical features of AD. Although the interventions varied in name, Poria cocos, Polygala tenuifolia, Rehmannia glutinosa, Panax ginseng, and Acorus species consistently appeared as ingredients in multiple formulas for memory impairment in the context of aging. Memory impairment in older age was a recognized condition in the classical literature. Many of the traditional medicines frequently used as ingredients in classical formulas for memory impairment consistent with clinical features of AD remain in contemporary use, and experimental studies suggest biological activities relevant to AD.

Editorial Note

Editorial Note Jing-Bao Nie (bio) and Ruth Fitzgerald (bio) Bioethics, as both an academic field and a public discourse on a global scale, has been evolving rapidly over the past several decades. The importance of cross-cultural and global bioethics as a subfield of bioethics is strongly reflected in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal (KIEJ). Since 1991, KIEJ has published a number of articles and some thematic issues in this area. Among many others, it has facilitated a series of debates in the development of a cross-cultural and international bioethics, including the issues of universalism and multiculturalism (Vol. 8, No.3 & 4, 1998), the eastern and western perspectives on personhood (Vol.9 No.4, 1999), and the (im)possibility of the common morality (Vol.13 No.3, 2003) (some features of these debates will be critically discussed in the first paper of this special issue). Actually, as early as 1979, the previous format of the KIEJ—the Kennedy Institute Quarterly Report—already published a special issue on medical ethics in China when China just initiated the transformative social polices of “reform and openness” and “economic development.” Nevertheless, as also reflected in KIEJ, the existing scholarship in cross-cultural and global bioethics has paid only scant attention explicitly to methodological matters. Partly because of this, many deeply rooted but highly problematic modes of thinking have continued to prevail in this vital bioethical subfield. To help amend this inadequacy, all the papers in this thematic issue aim to investigate the following methodology-related questions in one way or another: • What are the advantages and limits of currently dominant approaches to comparative, cross-cultural and global bioethics? • What are the essential elements of new methodologies of comparative, cross-cultural and global bioethics? • How can empirical and inherently normative studies based in anthropology and other social sciences be better integrated with inquiries of bioethics and especially the development of transcultural and transglobal bioethics? [End Page ix] This issue explores a wide range of theoretical and practical bioethical issues—from indigenous voices to global justice, from ADHD to universalism. But the overall objective is to develop a transcultural and transglobal approach to bioethics. In our collaborative search for this, we have nevertheless come up with several different (not one largely unified) but highly related modes. Hopefully these alternative methods will turn out to be constructive in promoting more meaningful transcultural and transglobal conversations in the field of bioethics. At least, we hope that all together the papers will show convincingly that new methodologies are sorely needed to adequately address the pressing practical and theoretical challenges arising in cross-cultural, comparative, and global bioethics. The five papers by an international team of authors tackle the common theme from a variety of intellectual angles. Academically, these papers are operating in such disciplines as bioethics, anthropology and sociology, philosophy (European continental and Anglo-American analytic traditions), Asian and Chinese studies, indigenous studies, psychiatry and medicine, literature, and medical humanities. Geographically and culturally, the authors are from China, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Canada, and South Africa. Four authors of three papers, including two guest editors, are faculty members at the Bioethics Centre and the Department of Anthropology in the University of Otago in New Zealand. Although being a very multicultural society, NZ is a small country (or better, “big village”) in the vast southern Pacific Ocean that many Chinese would call “the land of Peach Blossoms” (shiwai Taoyuan, an imagined idyllic place with beautiful landscapes and free from the world’s madness and turmoil from classical Chinese literature). Yet, New Zealanders (“Kiwis” as they would like to call themselves) have been keenly playing their due (often more than due) role in global affairs from not only their national- and self-interests but also their fostering of a renaissance of indigenous culture and their moral commitments to themselves and others in the world. The first two articles constitute a pair presenting the methodology of “transculturalism” for bioethics, one an outline of its key elements and the other its application to a practical bioethical issue. The article by Jing-Bao Nie and Ruth Fitzgerald draws attention to two troubling methodological assumptions in the extant writing...

Trois essais sur la traduction by Jean-François Billeter

Reviewed by: Trois essais sur la traduction by Jean-François Billeter Josh Stenberg (bio) Jean-François Billeter. Trois essais sur la traduction (Three essays on translation). Paris: Allia, 2014. 119 pp. Paperback €6.20, isbn 978-2-84485-896-2. Francophone Sinology, it would seem, is no longer familiar to most English-language academics in the field, unless it is in the guise of scholars such as the late Pierre Ryckmans (aka Simon Leys), who made their academic career in the English-speaking world. Yet Francophone work on modern and classical Chinese literature, especially with regard to translation, is often more extensive than its English-speaking counterpart. And while many German, Dutch, Swedish, and Czech scholars tend to publish in English at least as much as in their native languages—France, as in prerevolutionary Shanghai, maintains its own concession in the territory of Sinology. In an era where English-language Sinology has also been greatly enriched by an influx of Asian-born scholars, the tendency to drop French is understandable, but has the drawback of marginalizing a longstanding and independent tradition of engagement with China. In this new slim volume of three essays on translation from the Chinese, Swiss Sinologist Jean-François Billeter shows that the ignorance is not mutual: Billeter engages with English-language Sinologist scholars and translators such as Waley, Watson, and de Bary, while also comparing (and proposing corrections to) Francophone work by Paul Jacob, André Lévy, Ryckmans, Liou Kia-hway, etc. The author addresses himself to the general interest reader (as he has previously in his popular work on philosophy, especially on Zhuangzi), using the particularly difficult issues inherent in rendering Classical Chinese into modern Western languages as a case study. This creates an avenue for using his specialist knowledge to approach conceptual questions in translation studies. I use “conceptual” rather than “theoretical,” for while Billeter is engaging in issues of considerable abstraction, he nowhere succumbs to vagueness, jargon, or citation in lieu of explanation. Those who write about Chinese translation run the risk of being accused of exceptionalism, for translators of other languages are often unaware of the specific issues that face the translator from the Chinese: for instance, unmodifiable ideographs, a lack of grammatical clues and often punctuation, the habitual absence of the subject, of time markers. Billeter is not shy about making claims: his first essay, “Chinese Poetry and Reality,” begins with the sentence “The resources of the Chinese language and the French language are so different that no one has yet managed to give an accurate idea of a Chinese poem by means of translation alone and no one ever will” (p. 11). Throughout this work, Billeter makes the case that translation is a necessary and insufficient approach, that discussion about the problems of translation will “grant indirect access to the poem just as the poem itself gives indirect access to reality” (p. 12). In this work, the central claim is that “moving from Classical Chinese to French is indeed such that the difficulties inherent to all translation are more [End Page 288] apparent than elsewhere, and can be analysed more minutely” (p. 7). He goes on to explain for the layman the process that distinguishes classical Chinese from, for example, translation within “languages of the same family, [where] translation appears to consist of a conversion from one system to another” (p. 84). The structure of classical Chinese represents a case in which the complex semantic questions derive from a simplicity of form which is singularly dissimilar from Indo-European languages; but this is then not merely a case of simple non-relation (as between English and, say, Indonesian or Hebrew) but is, in my view, generated by the fact that Chinese is the only major ideographic (and basically nonphonetic) writing system. Major difficulties in translating from Vietnamese, Korean, or Japanese are also associated with the influence of classical Chinese. Various studies of Chinese poetry have made the point about difficulty and interpretability (such as Eliot Weinberger’s 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei), but these tend to be illustrations by means of comparative translation. Billeter instead furnishes an anatomy of the mental process of rendering. Classical...

Chasing the Modern: The Twentieth-Century Life of Poet Xu Zhimo by Tony S. Hsu

Reviewed by: Chasing the Modern: The Twentieth-Century Life of Poet Xu Zhimo by Tony S. Hsu Hal Swindall (bio) Tony S. Hsu. Chasing the Modern: The Twentieth-Century Life of Poet Xu Zhimo. Cambridge: Cambridge Rivers Press, 2017. xx, 210 pp. Paperback $20.99, ISBN 978-0-692-85981-0. This highly readable and well-illustrated volume adds yet more to the recent store of knowledge about the Western-influenced poets of China between the wars, besides containing useful subsections and appendices providing background information on the place, people, and period that will fascinate both the scholarly specialist and the general reader. The fact that its author is the grandson of its subject makes the twists and turns of twentieth-century Chinese history all the more intriguing, but Hsu manages to present the deeds and words of his grandfather objectively, allowing the reader to draw conclusions about both Xu Zhimo and the context in which he developed. Xu's life was tragic even before his early death, since like all Chinese literati of the early twentieth century, he was torn between his antiquated Chinese heritage and the question of how to reconcile it with Western modernity. In his case, this struggle took on a particularly romantic character, even for a poet, raising the question of what direction China would have taken if the Communists had not taken over, and/or Xu had not died young. Born to Zhejiang Province gentry in 1897, Xu was highly precocious as a child, especially in classical Chinese literature and the English language, and so he and everyone in his family expected a brilliant future for him (pp. 7–8). Xu's early promise, however, might be said to have ironically caused the greatest tragedy of his life: his arranged marriage to a girl also of Zhejiang gentry stock named Zhang Youyi. Youyi's father was so impressed by an essay by the teenaged Xu that he proposed the match to Xu's father, who agreed; also ironically, a fortune teller whom Zhang's parents consulted warned against the marriage, because Youyi had been born in the year of the rat; therefore, they changed her birth certificate to the year of the dog (pp. 8–9), but this did not trick fate. On the surface, the teenagers were well suited to each other, since they both came from the same social background, were educated, and [End Page 378] held progressive attitudes; Youyi even wore a pink wedding dress at their marriage, since it combined Chinese red and Western white (p. 9). Alas, Youyi was not progressive enough for Xu, who reportedly recoiled when he saw her photograph, calling her a "bumpkin" and going into despondency at the prospect of having to wed her. There was another problem, too: an incurable romantic, Xu believed that marriages should be based on passion between lovers who choose each other and not on an arrangement made by parents (p. 9). Despite disliking marriage to Youyi, Xu continued his education at several universities, including Peking University, and predictably enough he joined the New Culture Movement, besides being mentored by Liang Qichao, who had brought Western economics to China (p. 15). Knowing Liang and other Chinese intellectuals who had studied abroad fired Xu's enthusiasm to do the same, since he greatly desired to expand his mind; he therefore left Youyi and their infant son with his parents to study history at Clark College in Massachusetts. Here, he joined other Chinese students in discussing their ambitions for modernizing China when they returned home, and after graduating with honors, Xu enrolled for an M.A. in political science at Columbia University (pp. 16-17). As though an advanced degree from a top American university were not enough, Xu decided to pursue even more studies in England, because, according to Hsu, he felt "disillusioned" with the United States and was smitten with Bertrand Russell, to whom he had been introduced by Liang Qichao (pp. 18-19). Hsu does not say so, but the reader infers that his grandfather's continued sojourn abroad also derived from a desire to avoid living with Youyi and their son, as well as an aversion to China...

The Seongho () School's Study of the Ancient Learning () and Its Influence on the Debate about Materia Medica in the Late Joseon Dynasty

This study will determine the ways in which the ancient learning (gu xue, ) scholarship of the Seongho School, and its interest in the materia medica (ben cao xue, ) were related during the late Joseon period. The Seongho School centered its studies mainly on classical Chinese texts of the Han (206 BC－AD 220) and pre-Han (?－221 BC) (xian-qin lianghan, ) periods rather than those of the Tang and Song dynasties (618-1279). gu xue scholarship emerged during the Ming dynasty era (1368 －1644) as an alternative to the scholarly trends of the Song dynasty, which were dependent on Zhu Xi's (, 1130－1200) Neo-Confucianism and its interpretation of Han and pre-Han classical Chinese texts. This scholarly trend influenced Korean and Japanese literature, philosophy, and even medicine from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. Focusing on Korean scholarship, we find a great deal of research regarding the influence of gu xue on Korean classical Chinese literature and Confucian philosophy in the late Joseon period; however, no study has examined how this style of scholarship influenced the field of medicine during the same period. This study will investigate how the intellectuals of the Seongho School, who did the most to develop gu xue among Joseon intellectuals, were influenced by this style of scholarship in their study of the materia medica. Jeong Yak-yong (1762－1836), the representative intellectual of the Seongho School, did not focus on complicated metaphysical medical theories, such as the Yin-Yang and Five Elements theory (yin yang wu xing shui, ) or the Five Movements and Six Atmospheres theory (wu yun liu qi shui, ). Instead, his interests lay in the exact diagnoses of diseases and meticulous herbal prescriptions which formed an essential part of the Treatise on Exogenous Febrile Disease (Shang han lun, ) written by Zhang Zhungjing (, 150－219) in the Han dynasty. The Treatise was compatible with the scholarly purpose of gu xue in that they both eschewed metaphysical explanations. The Seongho School's interest in the materia medica stemmed from a desire to improve the delivery and quality of medical practices in rural communities, where metaphysical theories of medicine did not prevail and the cost of medicine was prohibitive.

An Analysis of the Difficulties in the Translation of Regional Classical Chinese Poetry-A Case Study on Chongqing's Overseas Transmission

With the deepening of the cultural exchange in the world, the unified orientation of Chinese literature is struggling in the cross-cultural communication. However, Chinese regional traditional culture has yet attracted more and more attention in foreign academic circles. As one of the local historical and cultural communication media, the translation of regional ancient Chinese poetry has become an urgent problem to solve. This kind of translation has a great significance in the increase of the influence of classical Chinese literature in global contexts. What’s more, it plays an important role in making new breakthroughs in regional research and promoting differentiation of academic studies on overseas dissemination of Chinese literary heritage. Taking Chongqing classical poetry as a case, this paper focused on the using of noun, the organizing of meaning and the expressing of allusions to interpret some difficulties in the translation of regional ancient Chinese poems, so that it can provide references for those who study the overseas communication in global contexts of regional classical Chinese literature.