Reading List (2025)

READING Paul F. Rouzer, A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese, Harvard East Asian Monographs 276 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Asia Center : Distributed by Harvard University Press, 2007).

1. Unit 4

   1. READ Lesson 22

      Mengzi had an audience with King Hui of Wang. The king said, "Old sir, you have treated a thousand li as not far and come here, will you indeed have the means to benefit my state?" Mengzi replied, "Why does the king speak of benefit? Indeed, have benevolence and righteousness and that's all. When the king says, 'How may I benefit my state?' the aristocrats say 'How may I benefit my house?' knights and commoners say 'How may I benefit myself?' superiors and inferiors struggle for benefit, and the state is endangered. In a state with ten thousand chariots, those who assassinate their lords must be a family of ten thousand chariots. In a state with a thousand chariots, those who assassinate their lords must be a family of a hundred chariots. From ten thousand, take a thousand, and from a thousand, a hundred, and it does not come to a small number. If you put righteousness last and benefit first, nothing short of usurpation will satisfy people. There has never been a benevolent person who abandoned his relatives; there has never been a righteous person who put his ruler last. Again, the king [should] speak of benevolence and righteousness alone. Why talk of benefit?"

   2. READING Lesson 23

      King Hui of Liang said, "My relationship with the state consists of exhausting my mind for it. If there is famine within the river [bend], I move [the area]'s people east of the river. When there is famine east of the river, I do the same. Investigating the government of neighboring states, there is none who resembles me in employing the mind. The population of neighboring states does not grow smaller, and my population does not grow larger, why?" Mengzi responded, "The king likes warfare, so I request to use warfare to explain analogically. "

READING Andreas Malm, Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam-Power and the Roots of Global Warming (London ; New York: Verso, 2016).

READING Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death (Harvard University Press, 1982).

READING Stephan Feuchtwang, Popular Religion in China: The Imperial Metaphor (Richmond: Curzon, 2001).

READING Pai Hsien-yung 白先勇, Taibei ren / Taipei people, ed. George Kao, trans. Patia Yasin, Chinese-English bilingual ed., 2. print (Xianggong: Zhongwen Daxue Chubanshe, 2000).

working thru bilingual edition

READING Can Xue, Frontier, trans. Karen Gernant and Zeping Chen, First edition (Rochester, NY: Open Letter, 2017).

READING Elif Batuman, The Idiot (New York: Penguin Press, 2017).

READING Helen DeWitt, The Last Samurai, First New Directions paperback edition (New York: New Directions, 2016).

READING Sade and John Phillips, Justine, or, the Misfortunes of Virtue, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

READING Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow (Penguin Books, 1973).

READING Kim Stanley Robinson, The Years of Rice and Salt (Spectra, 2002).

TOREAD Celia Brickman, A Short Course in Reading French (Columbia University Press, 2012).

french textbook i used before, start over once in the swing of classical chinese

1. ch 1

   1. Translation Exercise A

      1. the family
      2. the owner
      3. the majority
      4. the projects
      5. the technician
      6. the circus
      7. the television
      8. the scene
      9. the public
      10. the permission
      11. the moment
      12. the history
      13. the condition
      14. the nation
      15. the theater
      16. the restaurant
      17. the cuisine
      18. the climate
      19. the summit
      20. the president
      21. the architecture
      22. the immigration
      23. the pollution
      24. the agreement
      25. the visit
      26. the importance
      27. the center
      28. the victory
      29. the occasion
      30. the village

   2. Translation Exercise B

      1. an animal M S
      2. animals M P
      3. the choice M S
      4. a solution F S
      5. a debate M S
      6. the crisis F S
      7. a member M S
      8. trains M P
      9. the consultations M P
      10. actions F P
      11. the interpretation F P
      12. the son M S
      13. the sociology F S
      14. the discussions F P
      15. a town F S
      16. an army F S
      17. the army F S
      18. armies F P
      19. an hour F S
      20. the dance F S
      21. a bookstore F S
      22. doctors M/F P
      23. cases M P
      24. borders F P
      25. a newspaper M P
      26. newspapers M P
      27. a forest F P
      28. the table F S
      29. hospitals M P

TOREAD John Kieschnick and Simon Wiles, A Primer in Chinese Buddhist Writings, 3 vols., accessed January 3, 2025, https://religiousstudies.stanford.edu/primer-chinese-buddhist-writings.

try after finishing Morgan's primer

TOREAD Maxim Korolkov, The Imperial Network in Ancient China: The Foundation of Sinitic Empire in Southern East Asia, Routledge Studies in the Early History of Asia 9 (London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2022).

Qin

TOREAD Andrew Chittick, The Jiankang Empire in Chinese and World History, Oxford Studies in Early Empires (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2020).

Northern dynasties

TOREAD Hugh R. Clark, The Sinitic Encounter in Southeast China Through the First Millennium CE (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2016).

up to Song

TOREAD Nicolas Tackett, The Origins of the Chinese Nation: Song China and the Forging of an East Asian World Order, n.d.

Song

TOREAD Mark R. E. Meulenbeld, Demonic Warfare: Daoism, Territorial Networks, and the History of a Ming Novel (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2015).

Ming

TOREAD Yong lin Jiang, The Mandate of Heaven and the Great Ming Code, Asian Law Series, no. 21 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011).

Ming

TOREAD John Robert Shepherd, Statecraft and Political Economy on the Taiwan Frontier, 1600-1800 (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1993).

Qing

TOREAD Yiching Wu, The Cultural Revolution at the Margins (Harvard University Press, 2014).

modern