This little book became a reality because of the encouragement of Professor Tsuji Kōgo in Tokyo, Chan Koonchung in Beijing, and many other friends. The Japanese version, Chūgoku saikō: Sono ryōiki, minzoku, bunka (Rethinking China: Its territories, peoples, and cultures), was published in February 2014 by Iwanami Shoten. On the recommendation of Chan Koonchung, I published the Chinese version with the Hong Kong branch of Oxford University Press. Compared with the Japanese version, the Chinese version has been substantially revised and expanded, especially Chapter 3.
What I hope to share with readers in this book is how a Chinese scholar understands “China,” “Chinese history,” and “Chinese culture.” I also hope readers will understand how a Chinese scholar might take a rational approach to analyzing some of the realities about China and its neighbors. I recognize that it can be difficult for scholars not to take positions colored by their national perspectives or feelings about their cultures, but for a scholar to be called a scholar, he or she must go beyond these perspectives and feelings and have the ability to work from historical knowledge and through rational thought.
The Introduction and Chapter 6 originally took shape as a number of different talks and papers; a portion of these chapters was published in Here in “China” I Dwell (Zhai zi Zhongguo, 2011). To make the arguments in the book more systematic and straightforward, however, I revised these chapters extensively and added new material. I also worked to make all of the chapters respond to their respective arguments.
The Introduction is a revised version of a lecture I delivered on November 11, 2012, for the Distinguished Lecture Series of the Korea Academic Research Council. The original title of the lecture was “History, Culture, and Politics: The Historical Formation of ‘China’ and Dilemmas of Identity.”
Chapter 1 was revised from lectures written for my class on traditional China taught at Tsinghua University and Fudan University; I also gave a version of the lecture at the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan. A version of the text was originally published in Lectures on Ancient Chinese Culture (Gudai Zhongguo wenhua jiangyi) by Sanmin shuju (Taipei) in 2005.
Chapter 2 was originally prepared for a colloquium organized by the newspaper Southern Metropolis Daily (Nanfang dushi bao) of Shenzhen, which was later published in Southern Weekend (Nanfang zhoumo). The chapter has been extensively revised and expanded.
Chapter 3 was completed after I had submitted the Japanese version of this book to Iwanami Shoten and has not been previously published.
Chapter 4 was also prepared for the Korea Academic Research Council. The original title was “Multilayered, Solidified, Discontinuous: A Historical View of Chinese Culture.”
Chapter 5 brings together materials prepared for lectures delivered at the Northeast Asian History Foundation in Korea (2007) and a “Forum on the Future of Asia” held in Bangkok, Thailand (2013).
Chapter 6 was prepared as a lecture for a “Cross-Straits Humanities Dialogue” held in Beijing and co-organized by the Chinese Culture Promotion Society and the Pacific Cultural Foundation. It has not been previously published and was substantially revised and expanded after that event.
Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Ying-shih Yü for providing the calligraphy for the cover of the Chinese version of the book. Since 2009 I have had the opportunity to spend half a month of each year at Princeton University as a visiting scholar. Over the past four years, nothing has brought me greater joy than to see Ying-shih Yü and Monica Shu-ping Chen and join them in the wide-ranging conversations from which I have learned so much. Since Professor Yu has retired, he may not go out often, but, as in the words of Laozi, “Without going out the door, one can know everything.” Perhaps our many conversations together have been the “predestination” of which the ancients spoke.