School of Languages: Chinese Studies

Simon Leys is a Renaissance man for the era of globalization. A distinguished scholar of classical Chinese art and literature and one of the first Westerners to recognize the appalling toll of Mao's Cultural Revolution, Leys also writes with unfailing intelligence, seriousness, and bite about European art, literature, history, and politics and is an unflinching observer of the way we live now.

C. T. Hsia studies in depth six landmarks of Chinese fiction: The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Water Margin, Journey to the West, Chin P'ing Mei, The Scholars, and Dream of the Red Chamber.

These eight short stories, with parallel translations, offer students at all levels the opportunity to enjoy a wide range of contemporary literature without having constantly to refer to a dictionary. Richly diverse in themes and styles, the stories are by both new and well-established writers and range from a story by Li Rui about the honest simplicity of a Shanxi farmer to a story by Ma Yuan exposing the seamy underside of contemporary urban society. Complete with notes, these selections make excellent reading in either language.

A thorough overview and analysis of the literary scene in China during the 1949-1999 period, focusing primarily on fiction, poetry, drama, and prose writing