Chinese Studies: Books 图书

A Student's Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese is the long-desired Chinese - English reference work for all those reading texts dating from the Warring States period through the Tang dynasty. Comprising 8,000+ characters, arranged alphabetically by Pinyin. As a lexicon meant for practical use, it immensely facilitates reading and translating historical, literary, and religious texts dating from approximately 500 BCE to 1000 CE.

Written in the Qing Dynasty under the orders of the Qing imperial court,《康熙字典》is an important publication for studying the evolution, phonetics, and meaning of 47,035 words. There are twelve volumes altogether.The publication took six years to complete. It expanded and improved the formats and contents of past publications related to Chinese linguistics. Its thoroughness and completeness is one of the reasons why it is still widely used today. Having said that, 《康熙字典》is not without errors. Many later publications such as 《字典考证》were written to amend these errors.

Found in 《十三经》, a compilation of 13 classic study texts during the Song Dynasty.《尔雅》 is the first book on semantic studies (训诂学), published during the Pre-Qin era. It contains a total of 19 chapters explaining the meaning of 4,300 words used in daily life, dialects and the common language of that period. The book covered animal and plant names, daily necessities, geographical terms, government divisions, musical instruments, adjectives, and others.《尔雅》opened a new horizon in the field and its influence on later publications can not be ignored. 《尔雅》is written in a short and precise manner which prompted later generations to produce specific publications to explain the contents further. An improved version would be the《尔雅郭注》,which is an annotated reader guide written by 郭璞 (276 – 324 AD) in the Jin Dynasty.

Written by 许慎 (58 – 147 AD) in the Eastern Han period, 《说文解字》is an important publication in the study of etymology (文字学) in the Chinese language.It examines the structure, the meaning and the sound of the characters, and is the first dictionary to use the structures of the Chinese characters themselves to group the characters (部首分类法). This method is still used in Chinese dictionaries today.《说文解字》contains a total of 9,353 Chinese characters, preserving many of the writing systems（小篆）used before the Pre-Qin era, and also those that still exist during the Han dynasty. Hence it is especially useful in the study of the writing system in oracle bones and bronze inscriptions. The publication was also the first to summarise the six different ways in which the Chinese characters was believed to have developed and evolved in China.

An essential text for the study of Middle Chinese phonetics（音韵）, 《广韵》was written during the Song Dynasty under royal orders. Building on the foundations of previous publications, 《广韵》expanded on and tidied the contents of the older texts, especially the important Sui Dynasty publication (which has been lost) on phonology 《切韵》. It is also useful for the study of Old Chinese and Modern Chinese, making it an important text in the study of Chinese linguistics.The contents of《广韵》 is categorised according to the four tomes （四声） in the Chinese language. It is published in 5 volumes, with a total of 26,194 characters with 206 phonetics documented.

Written in the Yuan Dynasty, 《中原音韵》examines the phonetics of spoken languages of Northern China. The author 周德清 (1277 – 1365 AD) wrote it by analysing the phonetics used in operas at that time, reflecting the phonetics in daily languages used.Whereas 《广韵》examined and analyzed northern and southern phonetics in written languages, 《中原音韵》is the first book that actually studied the phonology of existing spokenlanguages in the Northern China of that period.《中原音韵》analyses more than 5,000 words, separated into 76 phonetic groups, and is published in 2 volumes. 《中原音韵》can also be found in the first volume of 《中国古典戏曲论著集成》 and 《传世藏书 经库 语言文字》.

Also available online. The Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics offers a systematic and comprehensive overview of the languages of China and the different ways in which they are and have been studied. It is the prime reference source for the lexicon, syntax, and sound structure of the Sinitic and non-Sinitic languages of China, including sign languages and many other aspects of Chinese and Chinese linguistics (e.g., Chinese in the diaspora, Chinese loanwords in other languages, history of lexicography, language pedagogy, etc.).

This is a bold project recording the lives of a particular group of Southeast Asians. Most of the people whose biographies are included here have settled down in the ten countries that constitute the region. Each of them has either self-identified as Chinese or is comfortable to be known as someone of Chinese ancestry.

This volume by the Chinese Heritage Centre in Singapore, begins with a historical overview of Chinese migration, then examines the impact that overseas Chinese have had on specific countries where they have lived.

This book is the definitive study of imperial Chinese local gazetteers, one of the most important sources for premodern Chinese studies. It represents a major contribution to the history of books, publishing, reading, and society. By examining how gazetteers were read, Joseph R. Dennis illustrates their significance in local societies and national discourses.

This pictorial traces the history of Singapore's Nanyang University, also known as Nantah, the only Chinese language institution of higher learning outside China. Based on an idea mooted by influential business tycoon and philanthropist Tan Lark Sye in 1953, the university received great enthusiasm from Chinese communities throughout Southeast Asia. Text in Chinese and English.

With Home is Not Here, the historian of grand themes turns to a single life history: his own. Wang writes about his multicultural upbringing and life under British rule.He was born in Surabaya, Java, but his parents' orientation was always to China. This is a fascinating reflection on family, identity, and belonging, and on the ability of the individual to find a place amid the historical currents that have shaped Asia and the world.

This volume addresses the new Chinese diasporas around the world, offering a snapshot of the cosmopolitan and shifting nature of Chinese population dynamics from the perspectives of anthropologists, sociologists, and scholars of international studies.