The Death of a Master of National Studies: Cultural Discontinuity in a Hundred Years of China

Author: Tongdao (Author)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-11-01
Features:
Mr. Tongdao's book, which first catches people's attention, is its title——《The Death of a National Scholar of Chinese Studies》. The 13 national scholars of Chinese studies written about in the book are not unfamiliar to China's intellectual community, but why are they focused on their deaths? In other words, what can readers see through the deaths of these national scholars? On this issue, our editor and the author had in-depth discussions during the writing process. We now present our publishers' understanding to you: To clarify the author's intention, we first need to define what "Chinese studies" truly is. This is also one of the most frequently asked questions during the preliminary research for this book. There are currently two opinions on the definition of "Chinese studies": One is to continue the definition of Zhang Taiyan, which includes textual studies, classical studies, and history, and this view is widely held in academia; the other is a more popular understanding, that is, "Chinese studies" is simply traditional culture. The book believes that the term "traditional culture" is too broad, while the description of textual studies, classical studies, and history is overly academic and cannot accommodate the knowledge levels of all social strata. Based on these two perspectives, the book proposes that "Chinese studies" is a mainstream value system of social mainstream values represented by the ideas of the intellectual class, using textual studies, classical studies, history, and other academic knowledge as its carrier.