Zhang Dake

Zhang Dake was born in Changshou, Chongqing, in December 1940, and graduated from the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Peking University in 1966, specializing in classical literature. He has long devoted himself to the study of Chinese historical documents and the history of the Qin, Han, and Three Kingdoms periods, and is best known for his research on the Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji). He serves as president of the Chinese Shiji Research Association and as a distinguished professor at the School of History, Beijing Normal University. His works center on textual organization and accessible commentary on the Shiji, along with popular writing on Three Kingdoms history. Representative titles include Studies of the Shiji, A New Complete Annotated Shiji, and A Critical Biography of Sima Qian, as well as the twenty-volume Collected Works on Shiji and the lecture collection Thirteen Lessons on the Shiji. His writing combines scholarly grounding with readability, serving both specialists and general history readers.