The recipient of the Kluge Prize for lifetime success within the humanities and the Tang Prize for “revolutionary study” in Sinology, Ying-shih Yü is a finest pupil of chinese language reports. Chinese historical past and Culture volumes 1 and a couple of deliver his notable oeuvre to English-speaking readers. Spanning thousand years of social, highbrow, and political switch, the essays in those volumes examine primary questions via all features of chinese language lifestyles: as an historic civilization, what center values sustained chinese language tradition via centuries of upheaval; and in what methods did those values live on or Westernize in glossy times?

From Yü Ying-shih’s viewpoint, the Dao, or the best way constitutes the internal center of chinese language civilization. those essays discover the original dynamics among chinese language intellectuals’ discourse at the Dao or ethical ideas for a symbolized perfect international order and their feedback of up to date fact all through chinese language heritage. quantity 1 explores how the Dao used to be reformulated, extended, defended, and preserved by way of chinese language intellectuals as much as the 17th century, guiding them via history’s darkest turns. Essays include the evolving notion of the soul and the afterlife in pre- and post-Buddhist China, the importance of consuming practices and social etiquette, the flow towards larger individualism, the increase of the Neo-Daoist flow, the unfold of Confucian ethics, and the expansion of service provider tradition and capitalism. a real landscape of chinese language culture’s continuities and transition, this two-volume assortment provides readers of all backgrounds a special schooling within the which means of chinese language civilization.