Renditions no. 80 (Autumn 2013)

This issue is another collection of writings in various genres and from different periods of Chinese history. We are both delighted and honoured to begin it with the late Professor D. C. Lau’s translation of the ‘Advanced School of Learning’ (Daxue), that foundational Confucian text offering sage advice on self-cultivation that was a moral guide in China for many hundreds of years. Other highlights include a Song dynasty tale of elopement and the resulting court case, and seventeenth century critic Jin Shengtan’s insightful commentary on the Shuihu zhuan. Included also are The History of Humanity’, an important 1907 essay by Lu Xun, a thought-provoking exploration on the differences between Chinese literature and civilization and the Western institutions by the controversial writer and critic Hu Lancheng, followed by ten contemporary poems by Chien Chengchen, and a short story from 1930s Shanghai by the ‘new sensationalist’ Mu Shiying.

126 pages

Order

Table of Contents

Editor’s Page 5
———— Advanced School of Learning
Translated by D. C. Lau
7
———— Miss Zhang Elopes with Star Brothers in the Night: A Story from the ‘Zuiweng tanlu’
Translated by Alister D. Inglis
24
Jin Shengtan Jin Shengtan’s Preface to the Twenty-eight Chapter of Shuihu Zhuan
Translated by Xiao Rao
35
Hu Lancheng The Heavenly Way and the Human World
Translated by Kevin Hsu
40
Lu Xun The History of Humanity: An Interpretation of the German Biologist Haeckel’s Monist Study of Racial Genesis, Phylogeny
Translated by Naikan Tao
61
Mao Dun Waverings: excerpts
Translated by David Hull
73
Chien Chengchen Ten Poems Selected from Paradise Lost
Translated by Chen Chienmin
94
Mu Shiying A Platinum Statue of the Female Body
Translated by Ping Zhu
114
Book Notices 121
Notes on Authors 123
Notes on Contributors 125