Ebook: A classical Chinese reader

Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2007. — xii; 138, T3-T23 p.Study draft. The ‘Memoir on the Eastern Barbarians’ in Hòu Hàn shu , with notes and glosses for students of Chinese and Korean.This reader is intended for students who have some training in classical Chinese, and wish to improve their skill with the language by reading a fairly long text without much need to consult dictionaries and reference books. The text used here is the chapter Dong Yì zhuàn ‘Memoir on the Eastern Barbarians’, in the standard history of the Later Hàn dynasty, Hou Hàn shu. The chapter is a kind of ethnographic description of the non-Chinese peoples of the region which today comprises Manchuria, Korea, and Japan. Because many students of Korean history read this text, the Korean pronunciations of the glosses are included, in the Hangul script, as well as the Chinese pronunciations in pinyin. In reading the text some background knowledge of early Chinese history will be necessary, and students will find it useful, before starting, to read or re-read the chapters on the pre-Hàn and Hàn periods in some general history of China.