croptoptux: A glass chinese tea cup filled with green tea on a wooden saucer, set somewhere outdoors. (Green tea)
croptoptux ([personal profile] croptoptux) wrote2025-04-15 10:58 pm
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A short list of Classical Chinese reading materials

[reposted from tumblr]

Disclaimer: I put this together from my notes rather quickly, and cannot swear by the quality of the links below.

Confucianism

Kongfuzi (Confucius) 孔夫子
《論語 - The Analects》
https://ctext.org/analects

Mengzi (Mencius) 孟子
https://ctext.org/mengzi

Daoism

Laozi 老子
《道德經 - Dao De Jing》
https://ctext.org/dao-de-jing

Zhuangzi 莊子
https://ctext.org/zhuangzi

Liezi 列子
https://archive.org/details/book-of-master-lie-lieh-tzu-thomas-cleary/mode/2up

Buddhism (esp. Chan Buddhism)

Tao Yuanming 陶淵明
《桃花源記 - The Peach Blossom Spring》
https://eastasiastudent.net/china/classical/tao-yuanming-taohua-yuan/

Su Shi 蘇軾
《赤壁賦 - Ode on the Red Cliff》
https://ajmccready.wordpress.com/2014/05/05/translation-su-shi-meditation-on-red-cliff/

Bai Juyi 白居易
《長恨歌- Song of Everlasting Regret》
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Song_of_Everlasting_Regret

Du Fu 杜甫
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du_Fu
https://allpoetry.com/Du-Fu

Li Bai 李白
https://archive.org/stream/worksoflipochine00libauoft/worksoflipochine00libauoft_djvu.txt

Wang Wei 王維 (and Pei Di 裴迪)
《輞川集 - Wheel River Collection》
https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/23162/Bruneel_2018.pdf?sequence=1

Additional misc. collection of the above 4 poets
https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Chinese/AllwaterWangWei.php

Hanshan 寒山
https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Chinese/HanShan.php

Platform sutra
https://www.thezensite.com/ZenTeachings/Translations/PlatformSutra_DharmaJewel.pdf

Lotus sutra
http://www.pawhitney.com/LotusSutrax.pdf

Heart sutra
https://huntingtonarchive.org/resources/downloads/sutras/02Prajnaparamita/heartsutra.pdf
larryhammer: Chinese character for poetry, red on white background, translation in pale grey (Chinese poetry)

[personal profile] larryhammer 2025-04-21 02:56 pm (UTC)(link)
I hesitate to point to this as it's an older draft with cringe-causing misreadings in at least 2/3 of the poems, but I did translate all of 輞川集. I'm more confident in my 長恨歌, though the Wikisource version is indeed quite good.