“Illuminating Chinese Classics” shares with you some of the stories behind Chinese history and culture, and the Chinese language. In each short episode, we unpack the meaning of a piece of classic Chinese text, and talk about how it relates to life in China today.
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“Illuminating Chinese Classics” shares with you some of the stories behind Chinese history and culture, and the Chinese language. In each short episode, we unpack the meaning of a piece of classic Chinese text, and talk about how it relates to life in China today.
ep 25 I like your old stuff better than your new stuff
Illuminating Chinese Classics
21 minutes
6 years ago
ep 25 I like your old stuff better than your new stuff
This episode on the Three Character Classic (三字经) is reminiscent of our earliest episodes about study. We talk about the importance of all kids having a good education (凡训蒙) based on careful study of the fundamentals (须讲究). In this case, it means learning how to read ancient texts (详训诂) and understand them despite their lack of punctuation (明句读).
In the episode, we tell a story about a scholar visiting his pupil. It might be a bit hard to understand without seeing the two sentences at the heart of the tale, so here they are:
下雨天，留客天？天留，人不留。
And, 下雨天，留客天。天留人不？留。
The三字经 was written by the Song Dynasty (宋朝) scholar Wang Yinglin (王应麟). This 1,134 character text was one of the first textbooks used by students, and provided lessons on education, morality and ethics, science, literature, and history.
Illuminating Chinese Classics
“Illuminating Chinese Classics” shares with you some of the stories behind Chinese history and culture, and the Chinese language. In each short episode, we unpack the meaning of a piece of classic Chinese text, and talk about how it relates to life in China today.
