Herbert Giles: 21 books

One day, an old priest stopped at a wayside inn to rest, spread out his mat, and sat down with his bag. Soon afterwards, a young fellow of the neighbourhood also arrived at the inn; he was a farm-labourer and wore short clothes, not a long robe like the priest and men who read books. He took a seat near...

An excellent introduction to the faiths of Chinese civilization, Religions of Ancient China surveys the earliest Chinese creation myths, the religious ventures of philosophers and emperors 5,000 years ago, the “benevolent agnosticism” of Confucianism, the “doctrine of inaction” of Taoism, and the sophisticate metaphysics of Buddhism.

If the Chinese people were to file one by one past a given point, the interesting procession would never come to an end. Before the last man of those living to-day had gone by, another and a new generation would have grown up, and so on for ever and ever. The importance, as a factor in the sum of human...

The following Sketches owe their existence chiefly to frequent peregrinations in Chinese cities, with pencil and note-book in hand. Some of them were written for my friend Mr. F. H. Balfour of Shanghai, and by him published in the columns of the Celestial Empire. These have been revised and partly re-written; others appear now for the first time.

In an illustrated Chinese work of the fourteenth century, of which the Cambridge University Library possesses the only known copy, we read that they reached this spot, originally the home of the Su-shên tribe, as fugitives from Korea; further, that careless of death and prizing valour only, they carried...

It is impossible to give here a complete key to the pronunciation of Chinese words. For those who wish to pronounce with approximate correctness the proper names in this volume, the following may be a rough guide:—