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Two days ago, a Penn freshman from China gifted me with a small format edition of the Guǐgǔzi 鬼谷子 (Master of Ghost Valley), a text that has long intrigued me.

Guiguzi (鬼谷子) is a collection of ancient Chinese texts compiled between the late Warring States period and the end of the Han Dynasty. The work, between 6,000–7,000 Chinese characters, discusses techniques of rhetoric. Although originally associated with the School of Diplomacy, the Guiguzi was later integrated into the Daoist canon.

(source)

Not only was I pleased by the content of the book, I was also charmed by its appearance.  Over the long decades of my career as a Sinologist, I have purchased thousands of Chinese books, but I had never seen one quite like this.  It has fine printing on good quality paper with a classy cover.  Its dimensions are small, 6 7/8ths inches (174.625 mm) by 4 1/4 inches (107.95 mm).  Published in 2015 (reissued 2019) (ISBN 978-7-101-10697-8) by the famous Chinese publishing house Zhōnghuá Shūjú 中华书局 (Chung Hwa Book Co.), it is part of a relatively new series called Zhōnghuá jīngdiǎn zhǐzhǎng wénkù 中华经典指掌文库 (Chung Hwa Classics Series for the Palm).  All the several dozen volumes in this series are premodern classics.

The editor of the volume on Guǐgǔzi 鬼谷子 (Master of Ghost Valley) is Xǔ Fùhóng  許富宏.  He has provided a punctuated version of the original text, illuminating commentary, and a Mandarin translation.  The only thing in addition that I personally would appreciate are phonetic annotations of each character, perhaps as furigana-like ruby to save space, but that is perhaps asking too much, since I have tried for many years to induce Chinese publishers to institute such a policy, as is often the case with bopomofo in Taiwan.

The format of this Chung Hwa series evoked memories of exquisite little Japanese series of a similar nature.  I asked several colleagues about them. Here are some of their replies.

Hiroshi Kumamoto:

There are basically two widely used book sizes for small format books.

文庫本 (bunko-bon) 105×148mm (=A6)

新書本 (shinsho-bon) 103×182mm

The name comes from the pioneer of both formats, 岩波文庫 iwanami-bunko (modeled after the German Reklam library) and 岩波新書 iwanami-shinsho.

What you refer to must be the latter. It's size is closer to the original Penguin books (I think it was modeled after the old Pelican series) and American PB, but the printing and paper quality are much better as you say.

Those issued by 岩波、中央公論社 (中公新書 Chūkō-shinsho), 筑摩書房(ちくま新書 chikuma-shinsho) and a few others are usually of excellent quality to be recommended to college students, but in the last few decades so many publishers followed this style that I lost count. The quality depends on the authors, some are, I must say, trash.

The number of pages also varies. A recent one by 森部豊 Moribe Yutaka, 唐, 東ユーラシアの大帝国* (中公新書 March 2023) has 380 pages and costs 1,100yen.

[*VHM:  Tang, Great Empire of Eastern Eurasia]

Nathan Hopson:

You're probably thinking of 文庫本（ぶんこぼん) size, which is A6 105 x 148mm.

There's a genre of 文庫本 called 新書（しんしょ） that are modeled on the old Penguin Books, etc., and often have nicely digested upper-middlebrow intellectual contents by senior scholars. I'm not sure it's still true but I have heard previously that the books are often transcribed lectures and interviews that are then modified by the author/speaker and editing staff, so they can be produced quite quickly and easily once the author is already an authority in the field.

Takata Tokio:

Books of the format are called sinsho 新書. You may consult Wikipedia.

Linda Chance:

From 1981 to November, 2012, when I precipitously stopped going to China, I made countless trips to the PRC, during which I bought thousands of books, so I was thoroughly familiar with the publishing world there, but since that time, I have lost track of developments in the format and contents of new book series.  Consequently, I was pleasantly surprised to see how very nice the Chung Hwa Master of Ghost Valley is.

Selected readings

• "English as ruby annotation for Chinese" (11/16/14)
• "Ruby phonetic annotation for Cantonese" (5/6/19)
• "Phonetic annotations as a welcome aid for learning how to read and write Sinographs" (4/26/19) — with dozens of additional posts on the value of phonetic annotation listed in the "Readings" section at the end

April 23, 2023 @ 8:29 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Books, Uncategorized

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