Traditional Chinese Children’s Primers: A Sourcebook

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Traditional Chinese Children’s Primers: A Sourcebook

edited by Katherine Ngo and Kelly Ngo

Lever Press, 2025

ISBNs

Paper: 978-1-64315-091-8

eISBN: 978-1-64315-092-5

About the Book

Traditional Chinese Children’s Primers: A Sourcebook is the first anthology of traditional Chinese children’s textbooks in a European language. This selection of eleven primers, spanning over two thousand years of Chinese education history, remains well-known in East Asia and the global diaspora of Confucian-heritage cultures. These texts represent an important genre of children’s literature and education materials that were employed to teach basic vocabulary, develop cultural literacy, and start students on their journey toward greater fortunes in the imperial examinations.

The sourcebook covers texts from the second-century BCE to the late twentieth-century, and a range of subject areas, including etiquette instruction, literacy training, character education, and Confucian and Daoist thought. The Classic of Family Reverence (Xiaojing), for example, opens a window onto early Confucian thought in ancient China, while the Extended Wise Sayings (Zengguang xian wen) represents the eclectic worldviews and beliefs of the seventeenth century, and Lord Wenchang’s Essay on Quiet Merits (Wenchang dijun yinzhi wen) introduces readers to the tradition of popular morality books.

This first-of-a-kind sourcebook in English addresses a long-standing gap in the translation of primers and provides impetus for research in the development of character and virtues, comparative literature, and cross-cultural education studies.

About the Author

Katherine Ngo and Kelly Ngo are lecturers of ancient Chinese literature at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David.

Reviews

“This sourcebook is an important collection of newly translated traditional Chinese children’s primers, enriched by a general critical introduction, as well as contextual introductions and rich footnotes for individual texts. A vital resource for academics as well as general readers interested in education, children’s literature, and early Chinese thought.”— Shih-Wen Sue Chen, Deakin University

"These texts, as fundamental reading materials in imperial China, are crucial to complement our understanding of Chinese cultural history. By bringing these together in a single volume and by providing all texts in a bilingual format, for the first time we now have an easily accessible, go-to reference book, which will be useful to scholars of history, child development, translation studies, and education."— Frances Weightman, University of Leeds