PREFACE

“Cherish one’s own beauty, respect other’s beauty, and when both beauties are respected and cherished, the world will become one”, said Fei Xiaotong, a famous Chinese sociologist at a cerebration party in honor of his eightieth birthday about thirty years ago．In a time of growing interest in intercultural communication today, these words sound especially wise and far-sighted．Translation, as one of the most important means for cultural communication, is usually done into one’s mother tongue from other languages by native translators．This largely guarantees the quality of translated text, so far as the linguistic readability is concerned．However, this method implies a one-sidedness in correspondence, as only the translator’s “respect for other’s beauty”is concerned, regardless, though not completely, of how the local people look upon and cherish their own beauty．It should be compensated by translations on the other way, that is, works selected, interpreted, and translated by the local people themselves into languages other than their own．This approach may go directly against the prevalent views in modern translation theories but, in my opinion, is worthy of practicing．It is perhaps an even more effective way to bring about successful communication in cultures, and the beauties of the world can really be shared by the world’s people．It is with such understanding that the Shanghai Foreign Languages Education Press is organizing a new series of books, entitled Readings of Chinese Culture, to introduce Chinese culture, past and present, to the world, with works selected and translated by the Chinese scholars and translators.

The series will cover a wide range of writings including but not restricted to works of different literary genres．For the first batch, we are glad to provide three books of essays and one book of short stories, all written by authors of the 20^th century．They will be continued by a batch of serious academic writings on premodern Chinese classics in philosophy, literature, and historiography, written by influential scholars of our time．Later, we will offer more books on classical Chinese drama, classical Chinese poetry, etc.

Some of the books in the series have been published before, but they have been revised and rearranged for the new purpose to meet the current needs of broader readers．We are looking forward to hearing comments and suggestions on the series for future improvement.

Pan Wenguo