San Zi Jing — Three Character Classic — Elementary Chinese

三字經

By Herbert Allen Giles. Distributor: Lulu. $29.99. 184 pages. Paperback CQ. 2016 (1900).

The Sanzijing or ‘Three Character Classic’ is a fundamental textbook of the Song dynasty attributed to either Wang Yinglin or Ou Shizi. Until the latter part of the 1800s, it served as a child’s first formal education.

It is a however much more than a child’s text book and it is worth approaching from the points of view of learning Chinese as well as those of evaluating its content and form.

Herbert Giles’ translation is one of the best English ones and his work may be read in parallel to the French translation of the text by G. Pauthier.

This edition provides a complete revision of the transliteration, adapting it to pinyin, and including diacritics for pronunciation purposes of the 451 Chinese characters or terms. The section ‘References’ is new; it includes a list of works by H. Giles and two generated list of works cited in the text.

Contents

• Forward by Eric Serejski
• Preface
• Sānzìjīng
• Appendixes – Variations
  • Variation Type 1
  • Variation Type 2
  • Variation Type 3
  • Variation Type 4
  • Variation Type 5
  • Variation Type 6
• References
  • Author’s works
  • References (Western)
  • References (Chinese)