To Summon a Wandering Soul

This is the third essay by Professor Xu Zhangrun 許章潤 to appear in China Heritage. The first — Imminent Fears, Immediate Hopes (1 August 2018) — was written in the style of a 諫書 jiànshū, an Admonition or Petition to the Authorities.… Read

Tao Te Ching — a new translation of a Chinese classic

The Tao and the Power 道德經, attributed to Laozi 老子 (5th or 4th century BCE), is one of the most famous Chinese works. Previously, China Heritage has introduced chapters from a new translation of this classical text by John Minford.… Read

Travelling in the Opposite Direction — Jin Yong & Me

The Best China XVI Jin Yong’s fictional world was enthralling. Although I first encountered the work of Louis Cha (查良鏞, 1924-2018), better known as Jin Yong 金庸, in the late 1970s, the first martial arts novel of his that I read — The Deer and the Cauldron 鹿鼎記 — was his last (it appeared between 1969 and 1972).… Read

In the Consequences of Poetry — Ai Weiwei Interview Part 1

Ian Boyden is an artist, writer, translator and curator whose work investigates the relationship between the self and the environment, in particular how art and writing can shape human ecology. His work reflects his abiding interest in material relevance and place-based thought, as well as an awareness of East Asian thought and aesthetics.… Read

An Afternoon in Beijing, September 1978

A Prelude to ‘Not Yet Not Yet Complete’ An Interview with Ai Weiwei in Five Parts
by Ian Boyden   For nearly a century, Communist regimes have employed damnatio memoriae, literally ‘condemnation of memory’, to deal with the ever changing terrain of history.… Read

Louis Cha’s The Deer & the Cauldron in English

鹿鼎記 The Deer & the Cauldron, the last in a series of martial arts novels by Louis Cha (Cha Leung-yung 查良鏞, 1924-), is regarded by many readers as his best. Between 1997 and 2002, John Minford brought out a three-volume translation of the novel with Oxford University Press Hong Kong (OUP HK).… Read