The Book of Songs

Li Shan, born in 1963, holds a doctorate in literature and is a professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Chinese Language and Literature, Beijing Normal University. His research focuses on the literature of the pre-Qin, Han, Wei, and Northern and Southern Dynasties periods. He has long been engaged in the study and popularization of the Classic of Poetry (Shijing) and Chinese culture, and is the author of works including The Cultural Spirit of the Classic of Poetry, An Interpretive Reading of the Classic of Poetry, How the Classic of Poetry Should Be Read, and A History of Chinese Culture. Nine of his works are included in the collection, among them the Classic of Poetry, Selections from the Classic of Poetry, The Grand Air of a Great State: Li Shan on the Classic of Poetry, and the expanded illustrated edition of An Interpretive Reading of the Classic of Poetry, as well as Guanzi, Guanzi (Complete Text, Full Annotation, and Modern Translation of Chinese Classics), A Brief History of Fifty Thousand Years of China (two volumes), and On the Dream of the Red Chamber in Sound and Color: From the 1987 TV Series to the Original Novel. His writing spans literary appreciation, historical reading, and Eastern philosophy, emphasizing the cultural context of classics through solid textual analysis, and he has lectured on the Classic of Poetry on CCTV's Lecture Room, building a bridge between academic research and general reading.