... by his subjects. Mencius was keenly aware that the root cause of Xianqiu Meng's interpretive errors was his misapplication of “cutting off a section to get a desired meaning” to reading. In response, Mencius immediately issued two important injunctions: “One should not let rhetorical embellishment...

... the Odes , [Zhou] investigated the fundamental meaning of this classic according to what Confucius said, ‘the three hundred odes can be summarized in one sentence: “think no deviance”’ and what Mencius said, ‘those who interpret the Odes and acquire the [original] meaning directly by their own minds get...

... Confucius lists as one of his three desires to act in such a way as to earn the trust of , and perhaps also to trust , his friends. Mencius, too, uses xin to describe a fundamental virtue. Asked why he called someone “a good man—a true man,” Mencius explained, “The desirable is goodness. Those who...

... bifurcation: sharp vision is useful for recognizing a sage when one meets one (but they may appear only once every five hundred years or less, according to Mencius), while aural cognition is necessary for knowing a sage when one hears about him or hears his words repeated by others. 28 This prioritization...

... of the letters from their immediate background and recontextualization in a retrospective historical narrative inevitably reshape readers' interpretations of the pieces. One of the obvious consequences is the lens of barbarity, as the letters are included in the “Biography of Braided Barbarians” in Song shu...

... , no. 1 ( 2018 ): 127 – 44 . Mencius . Mencius . Translated by D. C. Lau . New York : Penguin Books , 2004 . Meyer-Fong, Tobie . What Remains: Coming to Terms with Civil War in Nineteenth Century China . Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press , 2013 . Michael, Franz H...

... of Central Asia while highlighting the cultural values shared between the Mongols and the Han Chinese. Both works employ rhetorical strategies that laid the foundation for political discourse affirming the Mongol-Yuan dynastic legitimacy. One may question the significance of Yelü Chucai's strategy, given...

... essays, the “Yueshan wuyi ji” 越山五佚記 (Accounts of Five Obscure Mountains of the Yue), dedicated to the forgotten mountains in his native Yue region, Zhang Dai 張岱 (1597–1684) offers one of the subtlest interpretations of the affinity between canshan shengshui and loyalists. In his first essay, the “Cao...

... with the authorship of three zaju 雜劇 plays (which are all completely lost). 1 Yao Sui, one of the most prominent Chinese officials of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, lived from 1238 to 1313, which makes it likely that Yao Shouzhong lived from 1260/70 to 1320/30. Yao Sui belonged to the first generation of known authors...

.... They annotated and corrected existing collections of individual Tang writers, disseminating the results as “improved” versions. And they also created new works made out of Tang texts and offered competing interpretations of the Tang legacy. Intellectual historians have explored the influence of this critical...

... personalities. The selected novels are all landmark works of Chinese martial arts literature: Shuihu , one of China's earliest vernacular novels, was published in the sixteenth century, while Sanxia and Ernü both date to the nineteenth. Although martial arts fiction enjoys a long tradition in Chinese...

... from house to house, 社長排門告示， [and] for any levy of funds or corvée there are no excuses, 但有的差使無推故， [but] this tax is not the usual one. 這差使不尋俗。 On the one hand fodder for horses, 一壁廂納草也根， on the other more demands for corvée labor, 一邊又要差夫， [and we're] bound to manage them. 索應付...

... of this dream have invited numerous possible interpretations, and one way to read it is as a rite of initiation: after reading mythical texts and enjoying sensuous feasts, music, and dance, the hero is lectured on his own psychology and given a divine maiden with whom to consummate marriage. In Fairy...

.... One wonders, then, if the push to accept “archaic texts” was not a way of leapfrogging over regionally based scholastic lineages of interpretation, in the belief that the distant past was less disunified and more coherent than the multiple recent traditions better known to scholars of the day...

... lived. Much exegesis has been undertaken on the meaning of the Mencius phrase. For our concern, suffice it to say that poetry (literature) points to a special way of engaging with the human condition and the text: “One knows the other through the texts, but the text is comprehensible only by knowing...

..., poetic values, and spiritual attainment. By tracing the networks of symbolic meaning throughout the cultural fields of Chinese life, one can arrive at a deeper understanding of the thoroughgoing resonance of musical performances in this part of the world. Copyright © 2016 by Duke University Press 2016...

... scholars. This new commentary, titled Lunyu zhengyi 論語正義 (Orthodox Interpretation of the Analects ), was presented to Emperor Zhenzong of Song 宋真宗 in the second year of the Xianping 咸平 era (999). The Lunyu zhengyi followed the form of the Wujing zhengyi 五經正義 (Orthodox Interpretation of the Five...

... Zhongguo tese de” 他是有一點中國特色的 (There's something characteristically Chinese about it). Wang and Ge, “Renlei xue jia Xiang Biao tan neijuan.” (A partial translation of this interview appears in Wang and Ge, “How One Obscure Word Captures Urban China's Unhappiness.” ) Does diligence in service...

... and Interpretations of the Book of Songs ). Beijing : Zhonghua shuju , 1991 . Fu Ying 傅瑛 , ed. “Huishou wujia shansuiwan jiang yangui: Guanyu liuyu wenxue de duihua” 回首吾家山歲晚將焉歸——關於流寓文學的對話 ( Looking Back to My Home at the Hill, I Will Return at Year End: A Dialogue on the Relegation Literature...

... of the Mao Odes ). Beijing : Beijing daxue chubanshe , 2000 . Moser, Jeffrey . “ The Ethics of Immutable Things: Interpreting Lü Dalin's Illustrated Investigations of Antiquity .” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 72 , no. 2 ( 2012 ): 259 – 93 . Moser, Jeffrey . “ One Land of Many...