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Forty lessons designed to introduce beginning students to the basic patterns and structures of Classical Chinese are taken from a number of pre-Han and Han texts selected to give students a grounding in exemplary Classical Chinese style. Two additional lessons use texts from later periods to help students appreciate the changes in written Chinese over the centuries.

Each lesson consists of a text, a vocabulary list featuring discussions of meaning and usage, explanations of grammar, and explications of difficult passages. The standard modern Chinese, Japanese, and Korean pronunciations are indicated for each character, making this a learning tool for native speakers of those languages as well. Appendices give suggestions for further readings, review common and significant words, explain the radical system, and provide Japanese kanbun readings for all the selections. Glossaries of all vocabulary items and pronunciation indexes for modern Chinese and Korean are also included.

Customer Reviews (7)

A really excellent text for Classical Chinese
Having worked through several texts on classical Chinese, I found this one among the best. The vocabularies are comprehensive,grammar notes are good, although a bit scanty in later lessons, and the variety of texts gives exposure to different styles. This is really a text geared to classroom instruction, although a well-motivated person with a bit of a background in Modern or classical Chinese could use it with great profit. If there is to be a revised edition, I'd suggest including translations of all the texts, not just the first ten (although Rouzer gives references for translations of the later texts, some of these books would be hard to obtain without access to a university library). Also, this is a textbook for English-reading students, so the inclusion of Japanese and Korean readings of characters does not add anything for the vast majority of students; likewise for the kanbun readings, in romaaji, which take up a lot of space--anyone who could read kanbun would probably not be using this text. Such minor points take nothing away from the great utility of this book, which I'd highly recommend to those who want to read classical Chinese texts in the original.

Rouzer, A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese
This is a good textbook with interesting readings, which would serve well as either the main text for a course or as a supplement.The glossary brings out cultural implications of the terms.I also liked the unusual feature of including Japanese pronunciations for characters--excellent for students learning both languages, or students of Japanese venturing into the class without Chinese language background.

Very pedagogic !
It's a very clear, pedagogic and easy to read method for classical Chinese. With many examples, explanations. One of the best books about this subject.

Excellent
I've been studying modern Chinese for last few years, and have always been interested in the origins of this fascinating language. My first book in classical/literary chinese was Michael a Fuller's An Introduction to Literary Chinese: Revised Edition (Harvard East Asian Monographs) . It's thorough and linguistically exact but can be difficult for beginner. Another good choice is Yuan, Tang & Geiss's Classical Chinese: A Basic Reader in Three Volumes.

Paul Rouzer's Practical Primer of Literary Chinese is definitely the most user-friendly, down-to-earth approach to classical Chinese. Starting with simple proverbs Rouzer explains vocabulary, grammar and sentence structures clearly and concisely. I can recommend this book as first purchase to everybody interested in literary Chinese.

Excellent for learning classical Chinese on your own
This book will enable you to learn classical written Chinese on your own. Not that it will be easy -- it's still a daunting task, but the pace of this book, the way the material is presented, and the promise it holds for those who persevere (finish the book and you'll be able to read interesting texts, not just the simple stuff) make studying this great language a real pleasure.

As another reviewer noted, no Buddhist text fragments are presented, unfortunately, but that, so far, is the only downside to this excellent textbook. ... Read more

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1226 pp. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Book vs. E-reader
I got this book for a friend who was trying to assimilate into the Chinese culture & thought this would be helpful. It was but he was much better off with an electronic translation machine or an e-reader. Helpful book but not overly impressed.

Your Grandfather's Chinese Dictionary
Remember those GM ads? "This is not your father's Oldsmobile" (Buyers soon realized they would have preferred their fathers' old cars to the new junk GM was making in the 1980s!) Well, this truly *is* your grandfather's Chinese dictionary.

Weighing in at five pounds, this extremely large paperwight also includes over a thousand pages packed with up-to-date Chinese-to-English translations...as of 1943. Just to provide some historical context, that is before Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan!

As you might expect, this is not the dictionary to take on vacation. It is both too big and too outdated to be of any use to either a casual traveler or even a businessperson. Nor will it be appealing to new students first learning Chinese, who will no doubt be more comfortable with pinyin over the ancient Wade-Giles. But if you are a serious student of Chinese history or Classical Chinese literature, or simply enjoy languages and learning more about the development of one of the world's most important ones, this could be an interesting addition to your bookshelf.

Getting the dictionary in hand is another matter. Sixty dollars is a lot to pay for any book, and while Amazon Marketplace shows some sellers, my suggestion would be to troll campus bookstores for a copy. All in all, and especially given the price, I cannot rate this higher than 3 stars.

(The image shown at the top of this page is not a graphics error; the book is black with no text on the cover!)

A useful old dictionary, but be careful with it
Some of the other reviews on this page point out that certain Chinese-Chinese dictionaries are better than Mathews. But that's hardly a fair criticism; you have to compare it to other Chinese-English dictionaries, and those that take the classical language into account are hard to come by. (One work that is rapidly gaining in popularity is the Taiwanese Far East Chinese-English dictionary, which is expanded from an older dictionary compiled by Liang Shih-ch'iu.)

There are several problems with the Mathews dictionary, and the old Romanization is the least of them. More disturbing are Mathews's erroneous pronunciations, which are too frequent. You cannot rely on him at all for tones, for example. In the second edition, the great Y.R. Chao went through all of the entries and corrected many of Mathews's errors--but the press did not re-alphabetize the entries to reflect the corrected pronunciations, so if you are looking up a character with a pronunciation that Mathews happened to get wrong, you'll have to go back and use the stroke index to find it, unless you want to try and guess which mistaken reading Mathews might used. Both alternatives are irritating.

As another reviewer pointed out, Mathews does not provide any historical context for his definitions. One simply cannot tell whether a compound is modern or ancient--or, more dangerously, how the meaning of a compound may have changed over time. To be sure, there is a limit to how comprehensive a one-volume dictionary can be. But it still should be possible to give some brief indication as to whether a particular sense is attested in the classical language.

In sum, this dictionary is still useful, and a student will want it on his or her shelf, but it can be both frustrating and misleading.

Old can be Good
What, is this book still around?This was required classroom material for anybody who studied Chinese prior to 1980.Since then, other material has come out that sometimes has more characters (which is not an accurate indicator of total entries), frequently has newer coinages (but leaves older ones out), usually is smaller (admittedly, Matthews weighs a ton) but probably nothing that is all-around more useful than old Matthews.If you are a serious student of Chinese you should acquire it.

Great for starters, but Chinese sources better down the road
When I first started studying Classical Chinese, I used this book so often that I photocopied the character indexes to save time.However, I haven't opened it too often since those first classes.

The definitions seemed adequate at the time, and it is in English (especially useful when the word is some random object from centuries past), but I found the following things got in my way:

1. It uses an odd spelling system (Wade-Giles is more difficult than pinyin and zhuyin)
2. It sometimes didn't have the depth of the word I was looking for (forcing me to consult Chinese sources -- I should have started off with the Chinese sources.)
3. There is little context for definitions (historical notes or quotes from classical texts).

Although it's a good start, once you're relatively comfortable with modern and classical Chinese, it's probably a good idea to move on to Chinese sources -- at Berkeley we often use Gu hanyu changyong zi zidian for words that we don't need ALL of the information for, and the hanyu da cidian (or zhongwen da cidian, etc.) for stuff that needs lots of detail. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

China in 1905
This is an optical scan of a book published in Shanghai in 1908, namely M. Kennelly's translation of L. Richard's book of 1905. It seems to have been intended as a practical reference for European merchants, missionaries, diplomats or scholars needing exact information of China at that time and is a very good example of that sort of work.The first part lists and briefly describes provinces, towns, rivers, mountains and so on. The second part describes administation, military, economy, ports, trade, diplomacy and so on. Obviously, much of the information is out of date, but it can be used for historical information or to cross-check other works. The romanization is based on the Nanking dialect and is not orthodox. The scanning, or perhaps original print, is imperfect making many of the more complex characters illegible. For some other geographies of China see under National Geographic Atlas of China. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description

Until 300 years ago, the Chinese considered Taiwan a "land beyond the seas," a "ball of mud" inhabited by "naked and tattooed savages." The incorporation of this island into the Qing empire in the seventeenth century and its evolution into a province by the late nineteenth century involved not only a reconsideration of imperial geography but also a reconceptualization of the Chinese domain. The annexation of Taiwan was only one incident in the much larger phenomenon of Qing expansionism into frontier areas that resulted in a doubling of the area controlled from Beijing and the creation of a multi-ethnic polity. The author argues that travelers' accounts and pictures of frontiers such as Taiwan led to a change in the imagined geography of the empire. In representing distant lands and ethnically diverse peoples of the frontiers to audiences in China proper, these works transformed places once considered non-Chinese into familiar parts of the empire and thereby helped to naturalize Qing expansionism.

By viewing Taiwan-China relations as a product of the history of Qing expansionism, the author contributes to our understanding of current political events in the region.

Product Description
Any account of reading the Chinese past is enriched by the fact that Chinese writing is both ancient and current. No other writing system of antiquity enjoys this benefit. Since the emergence of the earliest discernible process of writing, in northern China around 1200 b.c., the Chinese system has been used by millions of speakers, and today more people speak a Chinese language than any other. In his accessible, straightforward book, Oliver Moore demystifies one of the world's oldest writing systems, introducing the basic principles of the language, the formation of written characters, and the ways these characters have developed. Drawing on evidence from numerous artifacts in the British Museum and elsewhere, he describes, chronologically, several of the major scripts used to write on each material, from the earliest oracle bones to calligraphic works of art.

Moore defines the Chinese language both as a member of an East Asian language family and as a broad term covering quite distinct variations in speech within the borders of modern China. He discusses how the Chinese writing system works today, demonstrating how it exerts its influence far beyond the traditional borders of China. The last chapter illustrates instances of Chinese characters borrowed to write non-Chinese languages. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Introductory Text of the Development of the Chinese Writing System.
"Chinese" by Oliver Moore is part of the British Museum's "Reading the Past" series, which introduces readers to ancient writing systems. While the other books in the series were first published in the late 1980s and may not contain the latest scholarship in some cases, this one was published in 2000. At 80 pages, it's also longer than the others, but still obviously an introductory text for laypeople. Chinese is distinguished from other ancient writing systems in that it is extant: It has been used to write the variety of languages spoken in China for 3 millennia. Though the script has changed, an understanding of the relationship between the modern characters and their ancestral forms is important for scholars in deciphering ancient writings.

Oliver Moore first explains the basics of how the Chinese writing system works: It is made of logograms, or characters, that represent words, which consist of a phonetic (sound) and a determinative (meaning). There are no inflections. Many words share the same pronunciation and must be distinguished by tone in the pronunciation, but that is thankfully not an issue in the written form. Moore then follows the history of written Chinese from its development around 1200 BC until the present, concentrating on the 12th through 3rd centuries BC, which was the formative stage of the script. It was standardized by the Qin dynasty around 221BC, so further developments in the script were stylistic, such as the development of cursive and regular scripts, which are covered in less depth.

The meat of the book is in Moore's discussions of inscriptions on oracle bones and a Xing Hou gui (tureen) from the 11th century. The gui contains a beautiful inscription in bronze that is featured on the book's cover and is analyzed in some detail in chapter 4. Like most of the "Reading the Past" books, "Chinese" is not intended to teach readers how to translate the language but rather to explain the mechanics of how the writing system works. There are enough examples, including more than 50 illustrations, and explanations in this book to accomplish that. Moore concludes with some discussion of the influence of Chinese script on Japanese and efforts to simplify characters in the 20th century to facilitate literacy in China. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
Boundaries - demanding physical space, enclosing political entities, and distinguishing social or ethnic groups - constitute an essential aspect of historical investigation. It is especially with regard to disciplinary pluralism and historical breadth that this book most clearly departs and distinguishes itself from other works on Chinese boundaries and ethnicity. In addition to history, the disciplines represented in this book include anthropology (particularly ethnography), religion, art history, and literary studies. Each of the authors focuses on a distinct period, beginning with the Zhou dynasty (c. 1100 BCE) and ending with the early centuries after the Manchu conquest (c. CE 1800) - resulting in a chronological sweep of nearly three millennia. ... Read more

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This dual-language compilation of seven complete major works and many shorter pieces from the Confucian period through the Ch'ing dynasty will be indispensable to students of Chinese literature. Owen's masterful translations and commentaries have opened up Chinese literary thought to theorists and scholars of other languages.

This monograph, number 30, is in the Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series of the Harvard Council on East Asian Studies, and is distributed by Harvard University Press. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An Amazing Tome
This is an amazing because thoughtful book and deeply steeped, as it is, in Chinese literary history, history, and philosophy. It sat on my shelf for a while, while I dreaded approaching it, it was sooooo large and daunting.

But as a practical matter, it's a little like a daybook for a contemporary poet interested in a probing of aesthetics, and the mindwarp it sends me into while I realized (as in see with real-eyes just as those in that time looked into the matters of poetry) that in the first century A.D. these poetic dicta were opening up subjects still discussed today, and subjects too on which contemporary poetry written in English are based, though mostly not so carefully brought into front-brain recognition as they are by Professor Owen's enlightened commentaries.(No, I do not know the author.)

The connections, for example, between government, Confucian thought, and poetry are drawn in the early pages. That alone is worth the price of admission, but it is by far not the greatest treasure in this book for a practicing poet.

This book is an intellectual treasure--and something of an emotional hit for one who has been reading in the philosophies and the poetry for years, nay, decades, and wondering about the how and why of these supposedly simple ancient poems.

R.B. Burnett
MA, California State University, Long Beach; MFA, Vermont College of Fine Arts ... Read more

Product Description
Merchant Princes of the East is an original and searching analysis of the economic success of Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. Focusing on companies, associations, social relationships and markets, this book challenges cultural explanations of that success. It is suggested that values, institutions and actions often interpreted and presented as definitive components of Chinese ‘culture are not peculiar or unique to Overseas Chinese, and may also be turned against material progress. The final chapter draws upon the arguments developed earlier in the book to consider the significance of the links between China and the Overseas Chinese both for China and for the Far East as a whole. Following on from the authors two previous successful books published by Wiley, The West Pacific Rim and The Creations of Wealth in China, Merchant Princes of the East covers a wide range of issues of interest to students and graduates of economics, geography, anthropology, social psychology and ethnic and cultural studies, as well as to those with a specialist interest in the Far East. ... Read more

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Phil Purcel was a singular character, for he was never married; but notwithstanding his singularity, no man ever possessed, for practical purposes, a more plentiful stock of duplicity. All his acquaintances knew that Phil was a knave of the first water, yet was he decidedly a general favorite. ... Read more