Introduction

I was in Britain in 1989. 1 was amazed at the curiosity of my British friends, old and young, about China. They wondered not only at her enigmatic thousands of years of history, but also at her vast expanse of green fields visible from the pictures I showed to them. "They look similar to our country," they would say. When I was free, I would chat with them, relating the current occurrences back at home and the remote past of this ancient country, various topics meandering like the Yellow River, far in the east.

Enlightened, marveled and fascinated with my story, they hoped I could write a book about my homeland. This sparkled my desire to display, in the written form, what I wanted to display about China. But, how?

After meticulous consultation and exploration, I decided to present a picture of China around the theme of culture. Culture, I believe, is so pervasive, so penetrating and so exhaustive that only under this category can I satisfy my friends' curiosity about China a country full of mystery, charms and potentials.

Six years of toil and sweat has resulted eventually in what now is entitled as - "An Outline of the Traditional Chinese Culture", with Professor Ji Xianlin at Beijing University as the academic advisor of this book. He is one of the most famous scholars in China.

This book is imbued with the substantial efforts of me and my colleagues, the other writers. 'Most of them are in the prime of their academic career, teaching either at Shandong University or at Shandong Normal University as professors and lecturers. The subject matter they wrote about is within the domain of their expertise.

So this book is unique in its wide-ranging selection of subject matter, which ranges from historical figures, events, allusions, folktales to music, dramas and plays, Chinese Wushu and folkcultures including wine culture, tea culture, dress culture, and dietetic culture. We hope that this book will become an eye-opener to friends abroad, opening before them the window to a panoramic view of the ancient oriental country - China. We also hope that this book can be so inviting that all those who are interested in learning something about Chinese culture and in contributing to cultural exchanges on a global scale will be invited to read it.

With all these hopes and wishes, we are looking forward to sharing the readers' delight to enjoy this book.

Prof. Yang Min
Editor in Chief of Shandong Foreign Language Reaching Journal
Sept 7, 2002