Direct Interpretation of Chinese Cultural Classics

Author: Cui Fuzhang
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2002-02-01
Features: Our Chinese nation has a 6,000-year history of civilization. Our ancestors created a splendid ancient civilization with rich cultural classics, which is an extremely valuable heritage. Collecting, organizing, annotating, and publishing representative works from among them so that comrades with general cultural levels can read, use, and benefit from them is the responsibility of research institutions and publishing institutions. Recently, Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House decided to organize the publication of the Chinese Culture Classics Direct Interpretation series, selecting works deeply and profoundly influential in the history of academic and cultural development in China, such as the Book of Changes, the Book of Documents, the Book of Songs, the Analects of Confucius, the Mencius, the Tao Te Ching, the Zhuangzi, the Chuci, and more than twenty other works. Each of these was meticulously collated, accompanied by modern annotations, and presented to today's readers in an authentic, straightforward, and concise manner. These works have been passed down for thousands of years, with some dating back over 3,000 years and others at least a millennium. Their enduring popularity and timeless relevance, even their worldwide influence, stem from their indelible "Dao"—the "Dao" of the nation, the "Dao" of Chinese culture. This "Dao" subtly influences the thoughts, values, ethics, and even behavioral patterns of the Chinese people. This influence is tangible and unshakable by any individual's will. Works that have been widely disseminated often attract numerous annotators, accumulating over generations to form specialized fields of study, which hold irreplaceable documentary value in the history of academic development and should not be treated lightly. However, old annotations are often overly complex, and even extracting a portion to create a "collected annotation" remains difficult for today's broad readership. While convenient "modern translations" may preserve the original spirit, they inevitably lose the essence of the original works. In light of this, the Chinese Culture Classics Direct Interpretation series adopts a direct interpretation approach: synthesizing the interpretations of various scholars, enriching them with new knowledge and insights, and using modern language for annotations without extensive citations. The main text is in large characters, with annotations in smaller characters, placed directly below the corresponding sentences (words, phrases) in the text for easy reading. This work may seem ordinary, but it is actually quite challenging. It requires reading a vast amount of books, extensively collecting annotations from past generations, and then comprehensively analyzing, distilling from breadth to precision, moving from the surface to the core, and integrating knowledge to achieve a fluent expression in plain modern language.