This Is China

Publisher's Note

This Is China—probably the shortest survey of Chinese history, geography, and culture that exists—was made possible by a much longer work, the 2,754-page Berkshire Encyclopedia of China: Modern and Historic Views of the World’s Newest and Oldest Global Power. In Chinese terms, even that is a short work: the Yongle dadian, or Great Compendium of the Yongle Reign (1408) had 22,877 chapters in 11,095 volumes. It was our longer encyclopedic work that made this brief history possible.

Chinese people, of course, understand the importance of brevity. And their society, as readers new to Chinese history will learn, has been one of many “firsts.” The Laozi 老子, one of China’s most renowned philosophical works, famously declared that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. This Is China, for those of us who are learning about the country, provides an easy way to take that first, single step through thousands of years of history and across the vast territory that is China today.

This history opens a window on contemporary China—with balanced, nonpolitical coverage—by providing our readers with details about Chinese governance, society, and culture through the ages. Even our cover design reflects the modern and the ancient. By choosing a scene cropped from a 2008 photograph of the Wuyang River in Zhenyuan, Guizhou Province, where a fisherman casts his line into the water, we evoke images depicted in thousands of traditional Chinese paintings. The cover also shows lines from a sacred Buddhist scroll called the Diamond Sutra. A copy dated 868 ce was discovered in western China’s Dunhuang caves in 1907, which makes it the oldest extant printed book (and a natural fascination for a publisher). The caves, located in an oasis along the old Silk Roads, are among the most magical of sites to visit in China today. Both Zhenyuan and Dunhuang remind us that historic China lives on.

The Chinese title of this book is not an exact translation of the English, but instead is based on the advice of LE La (乐 拉), a young Beijing-based friend. When we explained the concept of the book to her one summer morning in Easthampton, New York, she suggested we take a more colloquial approach—“Look! This is China” (瞧！这是中国). For our readers who are studying the Chinese language we include pinyin transliterations and characters for many Chinese words and terms. Perhaps even general readers will make use of Chinese words with nuanced meanings that are impossible to translate in a single English word—like guanxi, a fluctuating network of relationships.

We hope that our Chinese friends will enjoy how we have presented their country to the world. We urge them, as well as all our readers, to share the book, to discuss the “thought experiments,” and to send us corrections and ideas for future editions and for other China-focused publications.

《瞧这是中国：头一个五千年》也许是美国目前概述中国历史、地理和文化篇幅最小的书籍，其背后却以2754页的《宝库山中华全书：跨越历史和现代审视最新和最古老的全球大国》作为依托。当然，《宝库山中华全书》与11095卷，22877册的《永乐大典》这部鸿篇巨制相比，不可同日而语。

但是中国人深知言简意赅的好处，也深谙老子千里之行，始于足下的重要意义。对于我们这些有志于了解中国的西方人来说，这本小书在纵横幅员辽阔的中国来审视其几千年历史的征途中，只是跬步而已。

《瞧这是中国：头一个五千年》这一书名并非英文的确切翻译。英语原文比较口语化，是北京一位叫乐拉的年轻朋友建议的：瞧！这是中国。我们有意为西方读者打开一扇了解今日中国的窗户。书的封面是中国一个小镇的渔民正在撒网捕鱼。此情此景见于万卷中国国画，如此设计旨在把古老和现代的中国串联起来。

希望中国的朋友们能够欣赏我们为把他们的祖国介绍给全世界所作出的努力。我们呼吁中国朋友和读者把这本书推介给更多的人，并充分讨论书中思想实验室中提出的问题。书中如有谬误，敬请转告，也请及时把新的想法反馈给我们，这对我们今后再版该书或出版其他关注中国的书籍是十分有益的。

Karen Christensen 沈凯伦

Founder and CEO, Berkshire Publishing Group 宝库山, Great Barrington, Massachusetts, March 2010