It was an exciting moment to first hold in hand, after many years of waiting, Stephen Durrant, Li Wai-yee, and David Schaberg's translation of the Zuozhuan: three handsome volumes with a total of over two thousand pages, including an extensive introduction, the Chinese and English text, annotations as well as a bibliography, and two useful indices. Almost 150 years after James Legge's groundbreaking work (1872), we now possess a new, state-of-the-art English translation of the largest and perhaps “most important text” (xvii) from preimperial China. Although the translators modestly decline that “our work replaces that of our predecessor” and reaffirm Legge as the “measuring rod” (xxiv), there can be no doubt that their work will henceforth set the standard.1 If Legge's translation marked the beginning of modern Zuozhuan studies, the translation by Durrant, Li, and Schaberg summarizes the achievements of the field in the twenty-first century. So how...

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