Hidden customs and culture in poetry and literature

Author: Ding Laixi (Compiler)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-11-01
Features: The primary motivation for writing this book is to inspire students' interest in learning Chinese, followed by sharing achievements in Chinese language teaching. Over the long years, our ancestors have left behind a wealth of profound historical and classical texts. From these, we can gain insights into the ancient Chinese people's knowledge of clothing, food, housing, travel, official examinations, calendars, titles, and more. This knowledge not only helps us understand classical poetry and vernacular literature but also holds practical significance for enhancing our overall Chinese literacy. To enable students to learn about the customs and culture of our motherland through enjoyable and relaxed reading, I paid special attention to the following three points during the writing process:
1. Concise and Accessible Explanations: The main readers of this book are middle school students, and it aims to eliminate "roadblocks." All classical Chinese poems and texts, whether from in-class vernacular literature or extracurricular works like the Classic of Poetry (Shijing) and the Analects (Lunyu), are accompanied by modern Chinese translations. The goal is to make the material clear and easy to understand.
2. Small Thematic Sections: Each thematic section consists of several stories, specifically addressing certain aspects of ancient cultural knowledge. The "small thematic" format is flexible and varied, with varying lengths, avoiding the dry and monotonous style of dictionary-style entries.
3. Integration with Textbooks and Classroom Teaching: Cultural knowledge is vast and diverse. We have focused on selecting relevant content based on famous classical texts from middle school Chinese textbooks. Most ancient cultural knowledge mentioned in the textbooks can be found satisfactory answers in this book. Due to space limitations, however, some necessary content had to be omitted.