The first volume of David M. Honey's comprehensive history of Chinese thought offers a close study of Confucius, that tradition's proto-classicist. This opening volume examines Confucius traditions that largely formed the views of later classicists, who regarded him as their profession's patron saint. Honey's survey begins by examining how these views informed the Chinese classicists' own identities as textual critics and interpreters, all dedicated to self-cultivation for government service. It focuses on Confucius's methods as a proto-classical master and teacher, and on the media in which he worked, including the spoken word and written texts. As Honey explains, Confucius's immediate motivations were twofold: the moral development of himself and his disciples and the ritual application of the lessons from the classics. His instruction occurred in ritualized settings in the form of a question and answer catechism between master and disciples. This pedagogical approach will be analyzed through the interpretive paradigm of "performative ritual," borrowed from recent studies of Greek classical drama. The volume concludes with a detailed treatment of a trio of Confucius's disciples who were most prominent in transmitting his teachings, and with chapters on his intellectual inheritors, Mencius and Xunzi.

This ook redefines the bureaucracy of Ancient Chinese society during the Western Zhou period. The analysis is based on inscriptions of royal edicts from the period carved into bronze vessels. The inscriptions clarify the political and social construction of the Western Zhou and the ways in which it exercised its authority.

Examines the original composition of China's oldest books, the Classic of Changes, the Venerated Documents, and the Classic of Poetry, and attempts to restore their original meanings.

Zhou History Unearthed offers both a novel understanding of early Chinese historiography and a fully annotated translation of Xinian (String of Years), the most notable historical manuscript from the state of Chu. Yuri Pines details the importance of Xinian and other recently discovered texts for our understanding of history writing in Zhou China.

China is on the rise in the globalized world. The relationship between China and the United States has become the most important global issue in the twenty-first century. It is urgent to understand what is happening in China and where China is heading. However, there are many misconceptions about China in the West, which affect Westerners’ ability to objectively understand China, and, ultimately influence the making of foreign policy toward China. The author attempts to challenge the misconceptions coming from both Western societies and China, and offer an integrated picture of contemporary China through systematically examining the major aspects of contemporary Chinese society and culture with the most recent data, and presents convincing arguments in eighteen chapters for spurring mutual understanding between China and the West. The author intends this book to be an interdisciplinary and comprehensive guide to China for a general audience, and it covers a wide variety of topics, including history, family, population, Chinese women, economy, environmental issues, politics, religion, media, U.S.-China relations, and other subjects. This book demonstrates the author’s extensive research and thoughtful examination of many sides of controversial issues related to China with a nice balance of Western and Chinese scholarship. This is one of the few that are authored by scholars who originate from China and have their professional career in the United States, but it is distinctive from the rest of studies on this subject in that the author is committed to examining today’s China from Chinese as well as Western perspectives. This is not only a scholarly book, but also is suitable for general classes on China.

The Homeric epics and the Book of Songs are not just the fountainheads of the Western and Chinese literary traditions; for centuries they played a central role in education and communal life, and thus exercised a lasting influence on both civilizations. This volume presents the first systematic comparison of the two corpora. Part One analyzes their genesis and their reception, while Part Two discusses their characteristics as poetic creations. The book brings together Chinese and Western sinologists and classicists, and so promotes significant interdisciplinary and intercultural dialogue. Though the contributors rank among the leading experts in their fields, the essays here are accessible not only to their peers, but also to the interested ‘general reader’, and so to all those who seek a deeper understanding of Chinese and Western civilizations, their common human basis and their characteristic differences.