Chinese Literature Thread

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>>9205900

I've read Fortress Besieged and The True Story of Ah Q in translation.

Fortress Besieged was interesting. It starts out as a romantic comedy, then it suddenly takes a dark turn as the Fang Hung-chien travels across mainland China with some other teachers during the Second Sino-Japanese War to go to his teaching job. His group runs out of money and is close to starving, but Fang Hung-chien literally can't stop himself from making jokes and philosophizing on their situation. Then it goes back to being a romantic comedy after he gets married.

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>>9205272
>Chinese Literature

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Reading this right now. Somewhere between the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Plutarch. Salright.

>>9205900
Chinese "classics" are DBZ tier powerlevel wank minus the introspection and mindfuckery of Indian DBZ powerlevel wank

>>9206453
So Chinese classics are unadulterated, unpretentious fun? Sign me up

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favorite part so far

I've read the 4 Chinese great literature and some others. Not in the mood to discuss shit I just want to recommend some other less known works that you may enjoy:

Chronicles of the Eastern Zhou Kingdoms (Dongzhou lie Guo Zhi)

Records of the Grand Historial (Shiji)

Confucius is great
Lao Tzu is great
The book of Odes is great.
Lin Yutang is a pretty good writer.
RoTK gets better the more I read it.(I am at Chapter eight of the Moss Roberts translation)

>>9205900
Which translation did you get OP?

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Top tier shit right here

>>9207489
Moss Roberts as well. On chapter 3

>>9207607
Are you taking notes?(Writing thing down in a notebook and sticky notes on the book?)

Oh so many.

Lao Tzu - Dao De Jing

A description of a perfect natural life. Beautiful, poetic and incredibly difficult to understand.

Chuang Tzu - The Chuang Tzu

A wise and witty description of real life in the real world. Moments of existentialism, peppered with searing wit and thought provoking, heartwarming stories.

Confucius - Analects
Worth reading as a counterpoint, a lot of interesting teachings, but some very obsolete.

Art of War - Sun Tzu
Interesting, needs a lot of thought to relate and put into practice.

Fortress Beseiged - Qian Zhongshu
Witty and tragic in equal measure, the sad life of a sad man is told by an author who can't help showing off how clever he is, and not in a bad way.

Mr. Ma and Son - Lao Tse
Another book that's a comic tragedy. The Son is smart, Mr. Ma is a bumbling fucking idiot. Tells a tale that shows how hard life was for the Chinese who moved abroad and also how stupid and insular they were. Highly recommended.

Cat Country - Lao She
Satirical novel about a Chinese man on Mars that is critical of China. Interesting, but read Mr. Ma and Son first.
Red Sorghum - Mo Yan
I remember little. Overrated

Flowers of War - Yan GeLing
Moving, if sentimental story set during the Nanjing Massacre.

The Rape of Nanjing - Iris Chang
Powerful, horrifying book. Must read for any history buffs

Wild Swans - Jung Chang
Epic history of 20th century China told through the eyes of three generations of women in the same family. Interesting read.

>>9205900


Can some chiense lit fan please post some of the best chinese poems of all time?

>>9205941

A very accurate review. There were times I wanted to slap Fang Hung-Chien so hard

>>9207489

If you liked Lao Tzu and Confucius, do your self a favour and read Chuang-Tzu - you'll love it

>>9207662
Using google docs. I already have over six page worth of notes. Probably could tone down on the notetaking and focus more on the reading, but fuck, so many names.

>>9207711
this please

>>9207715
He was on my reading list along with Mencius but an english copy is expensive and a hungarian is hard to find.
I have two books of Zhuangzi,neither of them are complete.

>>9207735
I'm not so heavy on noting names.
Most of my notes are recaps of chapters and the sticky notes indicate where something important happens.(Battle bewteen X and Y or Cao does something wrong again pt.10)

>>9207793

Can you not just download an ebook or something?

>>9207826
I don't really like those.
And I have so many chinese stuff that I would feel stupid if I couldn't just pick it up from the shelf like the rest.
Not to mention I don't feel safe with an E-reader walking around in the city.(Not that it's a bad area,quite the opposite,it's nice.Only pensioners)

I know it's fucking retarded but also I just like physical media too much.
It's a fucking addiction.

>>9207854

I'm the same - but needs must sometimes...

>>9207863
Nah.
I have plenty of chinese shit to read already.
Like "A moment in Peking" or "Mulberry and Peach" or even "Jin Ping Mei".

would you guys recommend dream of the red chamber?

>>9207711
枯藤老树昏鸦
小桥流水人家
古道西风瘦马
夕阳西下
断肠人在天涯

>>9207711
昨夜扁舟雨一蓑
满江风浪夜如何
今朝试卷孤篷看
依旧青山绿树多

>>9207900
I haven't read it completely,but it's often called a "family novel" as in it follows the story of two families.(My edition is shit btw)
It's also a good insight into the chinese family.(in my opinion)

But the first hundred pages are pretty good in my opinion.At least based on the translation of the german abridged edition.

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Chinese romances are complete trash.

Classical Chinese poetry is the greatest canon of literature in the world.

>>9207925
>>9207938
>>9207972

please, translations? It can be either in English or in Portuguese

>>9207972

Drinking alone with the moon, Li Bai?

btw, I am this anon:

>>9207711
>>9208019

>>9207962
thanks, I'll give it a try.

>>9207972
Thanks for posting this, anon.

>Li Bo himself was particularly attractive to many of the Chinese readers of his time, because he seized upon the essential idea of Chinese poetics — the idea that Chinese poem was a spontaneous expression of the self — and elaborated on it, until he created an extremely overbearing, powerful persona for himself, quite unlike any sort of persona that had existed in Chinese poetry up to that point.

Sounds like Nietzsche...

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>can unfold protons into multidimensional supercomputers powered by infinite energy
>can manipulate the strong force to create unbreakable space probe that runs on bullshittium
>can do all kinds of ludicrous shit that makes humanity's loss inevitable
>still can't figure out a way for their shitty planet to avoid falling into one of their suns
Are the Trisolarans the dumbest ayyliums in all of sci-fi?

>>9208145
Chinese Scifi? Is that a big genre? What makes it different from western scifi?

Unrelated, the only notable regional scifi I can think of is russian scifi.