【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】

潘文国

1944年生于上海，先后毕业于复旦大学外文系和华东师范大学中文系。现为华东师范大学终身教授，博士生导师。中国英汉语比较研究会前会长。

潘文国是国内外著名语言学家、中英双语专家、资深翻译家，在汉英对比研究、汉语字本位理论、汉语等韵理论、汉语构词法史、中外命名艺术、翻译理论与实践、哲学语言学、对外汉语学等方面均具重要影响。出版有专著13部、译著8部、编著40余部，发表论文280余篇。

Professor Pan Wenguo, born in Shanghai in 1944, graduated from Fudan University with a major in English Language and Literature in 1967 and from East China Normal University with a major in History of the Chinese Language in 1981. He is now a tenured professor in East China Normal University and honorary president of China Association for Comparative Studies of English and Chinese.

As a linguist and translator, Professor Pan enjoys good fame in and outside China in many fields: contrastive linguistics, translation studies, philosophical linguistics, Chinese philology, Chinese word-formation, TCFL, to name but a few. He has published 13 monographs, 8 translations,  40-odd edited books, as well as over 280 papers.

【目录】

Introduction

Chapter One

A Brief Introduction to The Complete Works of Zhu Xi

 1. The Collected Works of Zhu Xi

2. The Classified Analects of Zhu Xi

3. The Complete Works of Zhu Xi

Chapter Two

Zhu Xis Personal Character

1. Aspiration for Being a Sage

2. A Practical Imperial Official

3. A Diligent Pursuer of Learning

Chapter Three

Subjective Characteristics of Zhu Xis Philosophy

1. The Combination of Principle and Material Force

2. Governance of Mind over Nature and Emotion

3. Knowing/ Doing Sincerity/ Reverence

Chapter Four

Synthesizer of the Song Dynasty Principlism

1. Communication with Cheng Yi through Minds

2. The Synthesized Principlist System of Zhu Xi

3. Development and Defense of Principlism through Correspondence

Chapter Five

Inheritance of The Complete Works of Zhu Xi

1.The Inheritance of Zhu Xis Principlism in the Song, Yuan and Ming Dynasties and the Establishment of Its Dominance

2. The Consolidation of the Status of Zhu Xis Doctrine in the Early Qing Dynasty..

3. The Disputed Case of "Zhu Xi’ s Tendency towards the Mindology at His Last Years”

Appendices

I. Bibliography

ll.Glossary