Product Description
This textbook for beginning students contains 35 lessons of increasingly difficulty designed to introduce students to the basic patterns of Classical Chinese and to give them practice in reading a variety of texts.The lessons are structured to encourage students to move beyond reliance on the glossaries provided in the text and to become increasingly familiar with dictionaries and other reference works.The Introduction to the book summarizes the grammar of Literary Chinese.Part I presents eight lessons on parts of speech, verbs, negatives, and the basic sentence structures.Each lesson contains a grammatical overview, a short text with glossary and notes, and practice exercises.Part II consists of sixteen intermediate-level lessons based on increasingly long and complex texts.The advanced-level, Part III, focuses on selections from five important early Chinese authors.Part IV has six lessons based on Tang and Song dynasty prose and poetry.Appendixes provide further discussions of grammatical issues, chronologies and maps, and a glossary of function words. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Dense and inaccessible
This text makes excellent use of carefully selected texts that take you from the most basic level to being able to approach the more advanced texts independently.It does require at least a foundation in Chinese (or Japanese or Korean), mainly because the reader needs at least to be able to recognise and differentiate the difference Chinese characters.Classical Chinese being a dead language, knowledge of the modern spoken language is not terribly helpful and may even be a hindrance.

A great way to get started!
This introduction to classical Chinese contains readings on all levels of difficulty.It also has many readings taken from the classics.There's selections from The Analects, Mencius, Zhuangzi, Hanfeizi, and much more.It is motivating to be able to read the texts that probably got you interested in classical Chinese in the first place!While this is a great introduction it's most likely the case that you'll need some background in the Modern Chinese, because these sections progress pretty fast.Still, out of all of the books I've looked at this seems the most helpful in getting one started with the Classical Chinese.

For use with a teacher
I have been exploring Classical Chinese for a few months now. I am not following a formal course of study. I have studied Mandarin and Japanese in the past.
The book has interesting material on the history of the Chinese language. The introduction to grammar is also useful, and the function word list in the appendix is very handy.
On the whole, however, the explanations given, even for the introductory texts, are too concise for someone working on his own. I am finding "Classical Chinese: A Basic Reader in Three Volumes" by Yuan et al. much better suited to my needs, because the text analysis is much more thorough and the vocabulary list richer. By the way, Yuan's reader also has a complementary volume on poetry, while Fuller focuses on prose only.

Needs editing and proofreading!
I have worked through this book twice now, once just to get a sense of the grammar, and a second time to translate more of the original texts Fuller includes.

For learning grammar, I have found the text useful, although Fuller at times assumes that readers know modern Chinese and therefore doesn't include romanizations during the introductory section, and includes words in the exercises at the end of the chapter that have not been introduced in the lessons and are not included in the glossary. Still, the appendices of romanization comparisons and of function words are very useful.

For translating authentic passages, the book is very good about using real texts, with commentaries, and about not shying away from difficult passages. However, my experience was that the texts became very difficult very quickly (in the middle of the intermediate section), and his notes become less helpful, before vanishing altogether with the advanced section.

While in general the book is useful, it does have some editorial problems (like those mentioned above) that should be addressed if the book is reprinted. The vocabulary is erratic--some lessons use words that are not introduced in the vocabulary list, while in other lessons, the vocabulary list includes words that have already been listed two or three times in previous chapters.

Further, the glossary in the back assumes that you already know both the character and the pinyin romanization, so that readers with limited experience with the language are forced to resort to another dictionary to find the character before being able to see if Fuller has included it in his glossary.

If you're new to Chinese and are going to use this book, be prepared to supplement it with Pulleyblank and other reference works, and to spend some time slogging through the more advanced lessons without much help from the author.

Excellent for those with previous know. of modern Chinese
This is a review of An Introduction to Literary Chinese by Michael A Fuller.

"Literary Chinese" is not the same as modern or colloquial Chinese.Roughly speaking, literary Chinese (also called "Classical Chinese") is to modern Chinese as Latin is to Italian (or as Sanskrit is to Hindi).Literary Chinese was (according to most scholars) originally the written form of spoken Chinese, but it became a literary language used for writing and reading.Amazingly, it became the standard literary language for not only pre-modern China, but also for pre-modern Korea, Japan and Vietnam.(This is amazing because spoken Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese are actually not historically related to each other in the way that the European languages are related to each other.)

Few English-speakers learn Classical Chinese, of course, so there are few English-language textbooks for it.Michael Fuller has produced a very nice one.

This book assumes that the reader has some familiarity with Chinese characters (as by studying a year or two of modern Chinese or Japanese).This book will NOT teach you how to recognize the parts of a character (which is a crucial skill in memorizing them), or how to write them, or how to use a dictionary.So someone with no knowledge of Chinese will almost certainly find this book extremely intimidating.

However, this is really good book, I think, for students with some previous exposure to Chinese characters.Fuller's Introduction begins with a clear, sensible explanation of basic hermeneutic issues (e.g., why "Grammar Is Not Enough").He then presents a learned but clear overview of grammar and phonology, with a bibliography for further reading.

This is well done, but I think most students should skip it and dive right into the first lesson.The first eight lessons each introduce a major grammatical feature (e.g., "Nominal and Verbal Sentences," "Parts of Speech," etc.).The structure of these chapters is explanation, Chinese text (long form characters throughout), vocabulary list (including pronunciations using pinyin romanizations), grammar notes, and exercises.

One of the things I like best about this book is that, right from the beginning, Fuller uses actual Classical Chinese texts.Lesson one uses two brief passages from the Analects of Confucius.I think it will be very exciting for students to be reading the "greats" of Chinese thought from the get-go.

Beginning with Lesson 9 (p. 103), the notes become less extensive.However, the new vocabulary items are still identified, and discussion questions of the content, and grammatical "review questions" (e.g., "Is X used as a coverb here?") are added.Then starting with Lesson 25 (p. 175), readings include only new vocabulary items (although when an author appears for the first time in this section, Fuller supplies a general introduction to him, and brief suggestions for further reading).The reading selections close with "Selected Tang and Song Dynasty Writings" (p. 229ff.), which are only the Chinese text, with no vocabulary or notes.Before this last section, all the readings are ALMOST all from the Warring States Period (403-221 BC) or Han Dynasty (202 BC to AD 220).This is a good choice, since these periods are generally thought to have produced the paradigms of Classical Chinese style.

If you are desperate to teach yourself Classical Chinese, and cannot begin with a good course in Modern Chinese, I would recommend buying this book with _Reading and Writing Chinese_ by William McNaughton, which walks you through how to write many of the most common characters.(Even better is the _Far East 3000 Chinese Character Dictionary_ pubilshed by The Far East Book Co., Ltd., but this is not available on Amazon, for some reason.) ... Read more

Product Description
Decades before the voyages of Columbus, Vasco da Gama and Magellan, Zheng He led seven major expeditions that extended the cultural and economic reach of the Chinese empire and helped China become a political superpower. Written and illustrated by Song Nan Zhang who co-authored the English text with his son, The Great Voyages of Zheng He highlights tells the story of a man who faced many obstacles to become advisor to an emperor and admiral of the greatest navy the world had ever seen. ... Read more

Product Description
Reprint of the 1876 edition. Hardbound. Oversized octavo. Book iv, [1] leaf, 233 p., [2] folded leaves of plates ; London : Trübner & Co., 1876. Bretschneider work is an account of the ancient historical and geographical accounts of the Chinese, as far as they treat of nations, countries and events spoken of also by western writers. These observations are in turn compared with the writings of western authors from the middle ages. The narratives are written by travelers to western Asia in the Mongelperiod and were originally written in the 13th century. The paper into various chapters, including the following 1. Writings of eastern and western authors to Mongolia. 2. An account of the Kara-khitai, an interesting nation originating in eastern Asia that in the 12th century dominated over the whole of central Asia. 3. Accounts found in Chinese and Mongol medieval works with respect to the Mohommedans. 4. The Record of military doings of the Mongols in the far west. !5. An explanation of an ancient Chinese map of western and central Asia, dating from the first half of the 14th century. Extremely rare book, only six copies appearing in library holdings in the United States. To our knowledge not previous reprinted. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Reads Like an Ancient Textbook (1876)
If you are a serious student of Mongol history, you will find a wealth of valuable information.If you are not conducting a deep investigation of the subject, this book will kill you.One major challenge with old source material is names, and for some this will prove a problem.Genghis is Chinghiz, Jebe is Chebe, etc, and together with a huge load of footnotes, this book will never be confused with a light read.Mongolian scholarship has come a long way since 1876, however this is still a treasure trove of info, particularly regarding the various tribes in and around Mongolia.In the intro Bretschneider writes, "...it is of great importance to compare the statements of several contemporaneous authors who have written on the same subject".Using what was available at the time, Bretschneider draws heavily on Chinese, Mongol, and Middle Eastern accounts and records.At the time it was written, this must have been one of, if not the, top book on the subject.

In the back of the book are two foldouts, one in English and the other in Chinese, titled "Map from the King Shi Ta Tien, Published in 1331 Representing the Mongol Dominions in Central & Western Asia".The author originally intended to write an investigation into this map, but was compelled to go deeper into the subject.The book is broken down into 6 sections:

Intro p1
1) Bibliographical Notice p4
2) Notice of the Kara Kitai p22
3) Chinese Medieval Notices on the Mohammedans p40
4) Chinghiz Khan's Expedition to Western Asia 1219-1225 p53
5) Expedition of the Mongols to the Countries North of the Caspian Sea & West of the Volga 1235-1242 p72
6) Explanation of a Mongol-Chinese Medieval Map of Central & Western Asia pp96-222
Appendix:
I. The Journey of Haithon, King of Little Armenia, to Mongolia & Back 1254-55, p223
II. The Peregrinations of Ye-lu Hi-liang in Central Asia 1260-1262 pp228-233

Regarding some of the works used for reference, the Yuan Shi or History of the Mongol Dynasty figures prominently, and he references versions dated 1603, 1609, 1623, and 1630, but I believe one of the the 1st versions appeared around 1369.Some of the more recent versions he had access to were published in 1824, and in 1828 in Russian by Father Hyacinth, though the latter only included the 1st 3 out of 4 chapters.Unfortunately, many changes took place among the various versions, including a corruption of virtually every foreign name.

I found this to be a particularly interesting source:

"In 1866 Archimandrite Palladius revealed in his 4th vol of Records of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission at Peking, a Russian translation of Yuan Ch'ao Pi'shi, or Secret History of the Mongol Dynasty, which claims the original document was written in Mongolian (in Uiger letters) in 1240 at the time of the Great Curilitai on the River Kerulun."

Bretschneider also uses considerable references from primary Mohammedan sources, and the result is an exceptionally well researched treaty on the Mongols.If you've hung this far in the review, then I highly recommend this book.I am also looking to get a copy of Bretschneider's "Notes on Chinese Medieval Travelers", which I expect to offer a wealth of information.

For what its worth, there are several versions of this book available at different prices so you may want to check them out.This one is HC and is excellent quality. ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Zheng He, Zhang Heng, Shen Kuo, Su Song, Li Jifu, Jia Dan, Pei Xiu, Yishiha, Chinese Geography, Zhou Daguan, Liu An, Yi-Fu Tuan, Xu Xiake, Bin Jiang, Fan Chengda, Li Daoyuan, Gu Yanwu, Wong How Man, Chang Chi-Yun, Cheng-Siang Chen, Yu Qin. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 167. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Shen Kuo or Shen Gua (Chinese: ; pinyin: Shn Kuò; Wade-Giles: Shen K'uo) (10311095), style name Cunzhong () and pseudonym Mengqi (now usually given as Mengxi) Weng (), was a polymathic Chinese scientist and statesman of the Song Dynasty (9601279). Excelling in many fields of study and statecraft, he was a mathematician, astronomer, meteorologist, geologist, zoologist, botanist, pharmacologist, agronomist, archaeologist, ethnographer, cartographer, encyclopedist, general, diplomat, hydraulic engineer, inventor, academy chancellor, finance minister, governmental state inspector, poet, and musician. He was the head official for the Bureau of Astronomy in the Song court, as well as an Assistant Minister of Imperial Hospitality. At court his political allegiance was to the Reformist faction known as the New Policies Group, headed by Chancellor Wang Anshi (10211086). In his Dream Pool Essays (; Mengxi Bitan) of 1088, Shen was the first to describe the magnetic needle compass, which would be used for navigation (first described in Europe by Alexander Neckam in 1187). Shen discovered the concept of true north in terms of magnetic declination towards the north pole, with experimentation of suspended magnetic needles and "the improved meridian determined by Shen's measurement of the distance between the polestar and true north". This was the decisive step in human history to make compasses more useful for navigation, and may have been a concept unknown in Europe for another f...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=1102000 ... Read more

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History of Geography. Chinese geography, History of cartography, Geography and cartography in medieval Islam, Chronology of European exploration of Asia, Environmental determinism, Regional geography, Quantitative revolution, Critical geography, Physical geography ... Read more