Where in Beijing can I buy scholarly editions of the Chinese classics?
September 3, 2015 11:35 PM Subscribe
I'm going to be in Beijing for a couple of days sometime soon and while I'm there I'd like to buy serious, modern, scholarly editions of some of the Chinese classics. Not translations into any modern language, definitely not versions set in simplified characters, but editions of the texts + scholarly apparatus. (So, not Penguin, not even Loeb - more like Oxford Classical Texts.) The difficulty is, I don't speak Chinese.
I can read Chinese, to an extent -- so for example if I knew what I was looking for and vaguely where it was, I could find it on the shelf, but I'm not able to Google up an answer to this question for myself. So - is there any simple way of finding books like this? (A particular imprint or series that I should be looking for, again a la Oxford Classical Texts?) And, if so, what's a good bookstore to go to in Beijing that would actually have them in stock? The easier to get to fr a clueless tourist, the better.
I can read Chinese, to an extent -- so for example if I knew what I was looking for and vaguely where it was, I could find it on the shelf, but I'm not able to Google up an answer to this question for myself. So - is there any simple way of finding books like this? (A particular imprint or series that I should be looking for, again a la Oxford Classical Texts?) And, if so, what's a good bookstore to go to in Beijing that would actually have them in stock? The easier to get to fr a clueless tourist, the better.
definitely not versions set in simplified characters
Not sure you're going to have much luck finding versions with non-simplified characters in Beijing. Even in Hong Kong, which is where my family is from, it can be hard to find scholarly versions that aren't in simplified, just because of the comparative sizes of the market/because most people who can read traditional can also read simplified.
This may be helpful. It's geared mostly for expats, but gives you an idea of what to look for. The ones near universities are probably your best bet.
Also, if you don't speak Chinese, try writing down what you want in English and showing it to store clerks. Many Chinese have better reading comprehension than they do aural.
posted by joyceanmachine at 9:12 AM on September 4, 2015
Not sure you're going to have much luck finding versions with non-simplified characters in Beijing. Even in Hong Kong, which is where my family is from, it can be hard to find scholarly versions that aren't in simplified, just because of the comparative sizes of the market/because most people who can read traditional can also read simplified.
This may be helpful. It's geared mostly for expats, but gives you an idea of what to look for. The ones near universities are probably your best bet.
Also, if you don't speak Chinese, try writing down what you want in English and showing it to store clerks. Many Chinese have better reading comprehension than they do aural.
posted by joyceanmachine at 9:12 AM on September 4, 2015
I would expect any modern text to be in simplified Chinese if it's in mainland China. It doesn't make sense to me why you would want it in traditional. Most of the classics were not written in traditional Chinese. They were written scripts that have changed a lot over the years. (It's a specific field of study to be able to read these scripts.) For many of these books, traditional Chinese is not any more "original" than simplified Chinese. Asking for it to be written in traditional Chinese would be a little bit like asking for an English book to be written with all the f's looking like s's, which as far as I know, which I have not seen a modern book do, even when they preserve the spelling.
If there is something like this, it can probably be found in the major (7 floor) Xinghua Bookstore in Wangfujing. There's also a foreign languages branch of Xinghua, but I can't imagine why they would carry this.
posted by ethidda at 4:21 PM on September 4, 2015
If there is something like this, it can probably be found in the major (7 floor) Xinghua Bookstore in Wangfujing. There's also a foreign languages branch of Xinghua, but I can't imagine why they would carry this.
posted by ethidda at 4:21 PM on September 4, 2015
Response by poster: I hear what you're saying, Ethidda, and it's not a bad analogy. I think to be honest standardized spelling is a better analogy, and indeed I deplore this practice -- and if I could buy editions English that preserved even the long s, I would. (I ended up buying a facsimile of Shakespeare's first folio due to this specific issue -- you seem to be implying a reductio ad absurdum, but actually you have me nodding my head, Yes, that's exactly the sort of thing I want!) Re the history of Chinese writing, also quite as you say, and actually, if any Chinese publisher was making a serious attempt to recreate in modern type more of the original diversity than the eventual codification of "traditional characters" preserved, to preserve more of the information that was on the original page, I'd be all over that! (Maybe facsimiles are the way to go for Chinese too?)
If what I'm after doesn't exist because there's not even niche scholarly demand for it in China, then that's how it is and I do appreciate the info, but please let's take it as given that I do have my reasons, however eccentric, for asking for this specific thing, and am not just afraid that simplified characters lack the mystical essence of the East or something.
posted by No-sword at 6:52 PM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
If what I'm after doesn't exist because there's not even niche scholarly demand for it in China, then that's how it is and I do appreciate the info, but please let's take it as given that I do have my reasons, however eccentric, for asking for this specific thing, and am not just afraid that simplified characters lack the mystical essence of the East or something.
posted by No-sword at 6:52 PM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
If you're still checking:
I don't know that they make reproductions of the ancient texts. But if you're ok with just traditional Chinese copies, I would check used books. For example, I found this site: http://bq.kongfz.com/detail_1278/ which seems to have quite a few classics in traditional Chinese. They're on the expensive side ($100 for the set of 4 classics, and who knows how much for shipping). You can also get pieces of text in calligraphy, but they're super expensive and I think not that old. (For example, I searched for Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and the calligraphy I clicked on is from 1940s, rather than 14th century style). Some of the books have a publishing date, so you can look at that as well.
posted by ethidda at 1:14 PM on September 16, 2015
I don't know that they make reproductions of the ancient texts. But if you're ok with just traditional Chinese copies, I would check used books. For example, I found this site: http://bq.kongfz.com/detail_1278/ which seems to have quite a few classics in traditional Chinese. They're on the expensive side ($100 for the set of 4 classics, and who knows how much for shipping). You can also get pieces of text in calligraphy, but they're super expensive and I think not that old. (For example, I searched for Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and the calligraphy I clicked on is from 1940s, rather than 14th century style). Some of the books have a publishing date, so you can look at that as well.
posted by ethidda at 1:14 PM on September 16, 2015
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posted by Ramo at 6:44 AM on September 4, 2015