China Great Encyclopedia: Music, Dance

Author: China Great Encyclopedia Press
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-09-01
Features: The Great Encyclopedia of China is a large-scale comprehensive encyclopedia in our country. China has a long tradition of compiling reference books. Over two thousand years, more than four hundred types of reference books have been published. These reference books are treasures of our national cultural heritage, collecting, organizing, and preserving important materials from the scientific and cultural classics of our dynasties. Some earlier reference books have been lost, but many have been passed down or partially preserved to this day, and these books are cherished by scholars in China and the world. Various reference books differ in structure, with some approaching the type of encyclopedia but not in the modern sense. In the mid-18th century, as China was compiling the vast Siku Quanshu, modern-type encyclopedias were published successively in France, Germany, England, Italy, and other Western European countries. Later, countries like the United States, Russia, and Japan also followed suit. Modern-type encyclopedias briefly summarize the knowledge and history of humanity and emphasize the latest achievements in contemporary science and culture. Over the past two hundred years, countries have accumulated extensive experience in compiling encyclopedias, making progress in knowledge classification, editing methods, illustration, and indexing systems, making them increasingly complete and scientific. Today, encyclopedias play a very important role in human cultural activities, and various types of encyclopedias have almost become necessities in daily life, much like dictionaries. The Chinese intellectual community, with a long tradition of compiling reference books, has long set the goal of editing modern-type encyclopedias. In the early 20th century, several small-scale practical encyclopedias were attempted, including the dictionary-like Cihai that was close to the encyclopedia format. However, none of these reached the standards of modern encyclopedias. When the People's Republic of China was founded, the then-Publishing Supervisory Commission considered publishing a Chinese encyclopedia, and later the 12-year plan for scientific and cultural development also included the compilation and publication of encyclopedias. In 1958, a plan to carry out this work was proposed, but it was never realized. It wasn't until 1978 that the State Council decided to compile and publish The Great Encyclopedia of China and established China Great Encyclopedia Press to oversee the project. As this was China's first encyclopedia, the difficulties of the editing process were inevitable. However, due to the urgent demand from the academic community, it was not possible to wait for the collection of materials from all disciplines to be relatively complete before compiling and publishing; nor was it possible to wait for all entries to be written before compiling the entire book in alphabetical order by Pinyin. Instead, experts and scholars across the country were invited to write entries in different fields, and the book was published in volumes according to discipline. That is, as soon as a subject (one or several volumes) was completed, its volume was published, allowing the entire work to be released progressively. This approach inevitably introduced many shortcomings, but under the current circumstances, it was the only viable option. We plan to adopt the common practice of encyclopedias edited by countries around the world in the second edition, arranging all entries in alphabetical order rather than by discipline, making it easier for readers to find and check information. The first edition of The Great Encyclopedia of China is organized by discipline and volume, with entries in each discipline still arranged in alphabetical order, supplemented by a stroke index and other indexes for easier reference. The content of The Great Encyclopedia of China covers various disciplines and fields, including philosophy, social sciences, literature and art, culture and education, natural sciences, and engineering technology. It is preliminarily planned to have a total of 80 volumes, with each volume containing approximately 1.2 to 1.5 million words (including illustrations and indexes). The plan is to complete it in about ten years. The number of volumes and word count of the first edition will exceed those of most general encyclopedias published abroad, but it will be comparable to the initial editions of some foreign encyclopedias. We plan to adjust and compress the content in the second edition.