… felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken … — John Keats *** In February and March 2016, John Minford, co-founder of The Wairarapa Academy for New Sinology and a leading literary translator of Chinese, presented ‘On Culture and Translation’, a series of five public lectures at the Hang Seng Management College 恒生管理學院 in Hong Kong where he is Sin Wai Kin Honorary Professor of Translation and Culture 冼為堅榮譽教授 (中國文化與翻譯) in the School of Translation.… Read

Other People’s Thoughts is a section in the Journal of the China Heritage site. It is inspired by a compilation of quotations put together by Simon Leys (Pierre Ryckmans), one of our Ancestors, during his reading life.… Read

The Eighth Day of the Fourth Month 四月初八 is celebrated as the Buddha’s Birthday. Falling on the 3rd of May 2017 the festivities are sandwiched between China’s 1st of May International Labor Day 國際勞動節, a public holiday that lasts until the 2nd of May and marked by a long weekend, and Youth Festival 青年節 on the 4th of May.… Read

One of the many abiding legacies of Confucius is his legendary work as an editor. The Mentor-Exemplar of Ten Thousand Ages 萬世師表 is famed for editing the classic Book of Songs 詩經, thereby creating China’s earliest work of literature while at the same time establishing a tradition of censorship: according to legend he edited some 3000 folk songs and poems down to a scant 305 for the edification of his disciples.… Read

Christopher Rea’s The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China (University of California Press, 2015) was awarded the Joseph Levenson Book Prize (Post-1900 China) at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in March 2017.… Read

The New York-based photographer Lois Conner’s work is featured on the masthead of this site and on that of China Heritage Annual, which was launched in March 2017. Lois and I met in New York in the summer of 1996, and since then we have worked together on many projects (a list of our collaborations is given below).… Read