By continuing you agree to eChinacities's Privacy Policy .
Sign up with Google
Sign up with Facebook
Q: There's too much Chinese literature. Got any recommendations on what to read next?
It amazes me how rich Chinese history and culture is. I've already gotten Romance of the Three Kingdoms down (frigging amazing), but have yet to read the rest of the classics.
There's so much literature that, even if I devoted my entire life to it, I wouldn't be able to read it all, so I'd like some recommendations. I've never touched the Spring and Autumn Annals, but that looks like a good thing to read next.
I want something ancient, but up to -- and including -- the Qing Dynasty is fine. I can't really connect with modern-day China, or it's authors. Do you guys and gals have any recommendations on what I should read next? Why should I read it? What's the plot?
English translations are preferred... I have an extremely difficult time understanding the old written vernacular. Oh, and movies are fine too... so as long as they're pretty close to the actual book.
I read the Tao Te Ching years ago, but it's hardly a novel. Or at least if it is it has a very vague plot. Loved it though. As for movies 'A World Without Thieves' is my favourite.
Mr_spoon:
Oh yeah, that movie was pretty great.
If only mainlanders would make less movies about ancient China and the wars against Japan...
"outlaws of the marsh" killing tigers in battle is pretty cool and some tough female fighters also.
Instead of literature, I would like to recommend you some 《成语故事》. They are stories of Chinese sayings/proverbs from ancient time.Full of history wisdom and people's thoughts. Well yeah we read those in children time but they are very interesting and would be easy for you because those stories are usually in simple Chinese and they have pinyin to every character or the difficult ones.
Haven't read any English version of a Chinese novel yet lol.
I'd recommend the poets from the Tang Dynasty. No real plot, as it just a collection of poets, but a lot of the themes that get touched on over an over again are really relatable, especially if you're feeling homesick. You see, this was the first time that the Chinese started to administer a civil service exam on a large scale. At the time they claimed that it gave them a set of standards that could be use to determine which bureaucrat could be placed where. Now the problem with this is that a big part of the exam was based around the test taker's ability to compose a excellent poem, where as the quality of something like poetry is always subjective. The whole system ended up turning into a means of breaking up rival cliques at court pretty quickly, and they ended up with was a bunch of hyper-literate guys living out it the boondocks writing poems about how much it sucked to have to live in a back water while they were in dutch with the powers that be.
Not really looking for any collection of poems or sayings, sorry guys! I'm only interested in novels/historical accounts/etc.
I read Journey to the West a few years ago. It's really long but pretty entertaining. There have been several Chinese television series too. I recommend the low budget 1980s version.
