Details
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 one book 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.
Table of Contents
The Sea Dream
The Tall Woman and Her Short Husband
Daban
The Beijing People （Excerpts）
The True Heroes （Excerpts）
Under the Sky （Excerpts）
An Old Well
The Wilderness
Flying Over My Hometown of Maple and Poplar
Huang Yao
Quhu
The Dry Ravine
The Stories of the Taibai Mountain （Excerpts）
New Literary Sketches （Excerpts）
Silence
Walking on the Street
On Edge
The Scissors
The President's Last Words
Father's Stories： Camel Dung
Taotao the Novice Monk
The Reincarnation
The Death of the Gatekeeper
The Horse-carriage Driver
The Public Kitchen
In the Grass
The Earrings
The Festival of the Eighteenth
The Hidden Darts
The Bitter Bamboo
A Bird Passing By
The Dreamlike Song
The Lynx
The Debt in 1956
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Preface
'Cherish one's own beauty, respect other's beauty, and when both beauties are respected and cherished, the world will become one, ' 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 ofthe world can really be shared by the world's people. It is with such understanding that the Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press is organizing a new series of books, entitled Readings of Chin.ese Culture, to introduce Chinese culture, past and present, to the world, with works selected and translated by the Chinese scholars and translators.
