When Professor Yu Dan presented the first of her 7 lectures entitled Explanations of The Analects of Confucius on China’s CCTV10, her first book Yu Dan’s Thinking of The Analects of Confucius immediately sold 12,600 copies in the 24 hours following the broadcast. Within a month the book had sold 1.5 million copies and within a year it had sold over 4 million copies across China.
Yu Dan’s Thinking of The Analects of Confucius became an instant Chinese phenomenon and Professor Yu Dan became a household name for all Chinese. Known as “The Beauty Professor”, Yu Dan is young, attractive and female; here, she offers a radically new insight into the ancient wisdom that has defined the lives and culture of literally billions of people in the world today.
Yu Dan’s Thinking of The Analects of Confucius is often popularly described as the ‘Chinese Chicken Soup for the Soul’.
The Analects of Confucius, a collection of Confucius’s words and deeds recorded by his disciples, is the most important book in Chinese history. For thousands of years, Confucius’s ideas have been seen as a model on which rulers should pattern their rule and individuals regulate their own conduct. Confucian classics such as the Analects dominated Chinese culture for almost two and a half thousand years, right up until the early years of the twentieth century.
China is a country in the grip of profound and overwhelming change. Yu Dan’s fresh, modern and controversial interpretation of the Analects presents a clear alternative view to which the new generation of Chinese can relate and understand. Yu Dan brings Confucius’s ideas up to date and back to life, showing that they are highly relevant to the modern world – in fact they are of as much value to us now as they were over two thousand years ago.
This book was written for a Chinese audience adapting to the changes of modern life. It is just as relevant to people living in the West, who face similar problems and conflicts in their own lives. It is no coincidence that many of the stories Yu Dan uses to illustrate her points come from western sources, everything from folk tales to Hegel.
Professor Yu Dan
Yu Dan is a 41 year old media scholar based at Beijing Normal University. Between studying the ancient analects of Confucius and giving television lectures she’s a media advisor for some of China’s best television producers.
It’s reported that the first print run for Yu Dan’s Thinking of The Analects of Confucius was 600,000 copies, which was the biggest initial print run for such a book in China at that time.
Yu Dan said, “To energise an ancient classic in the modern age, we must explain it and comment on its contemporaneity. When I was a student, such classics were simply to be worshipped, demanding our spending a whole life in researching and absorbing its essence. But now, as we need to spread the understanding of the classic, I think we should get rid of this stance of worship. We should make it easier to understand, and apply it to ordinary life.”
Toby Eady, Yu Dan’s literary agent, comments, Yu Dan’s Thinking of The Analects of Confucius is the quintessence of Chinese history from the ancient scriptorium.
Yu Dan shares, in her own experience, with the people of China Confucius and Mencius. Through the book Yu Dan’s Thinking of The Analects of Confucius the world will understand the ideological root of the Chinese people and their cultural heritage.
Toby believes that the Macmillan Group’s long-term cooperation with China's educational publishing industry, as well as its strong presence in the international markets, will provide favorable conditions for the promotion of the title, not only in China but also all over the world. It will also introduce to global literature the profound and valuable teachings of Confucius and Mencius.
Esther Tyldesley will be the translator of this book. As Toby explains, Esther Tyldesley’s understanding of the Chinese culture is not limited to textbooks nor to the academic field. She is one of the very few Chinese-English translators who understands the lives of Chinese people in rural villages and the Chinese streetscape. She is celebrated for her respect and thoroughness to the Chinese cultures and traditions. She also has the humility and perseverance to pursue knowledge of China and the profound desire to share that with the western world.
Toby views that a good piece of translated work has to be a reproduction of the original culture in the reading language. It is not a Chinese dish with extra sweet and sour flavorings added so as to be tailor-made for the western reader. The world needs each one’s own characteristics to understand and to communicate, rather than accept duplication and to agree.
Ms. Esther Tyldesley (Translator)
Esther has a BA in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MA in Applied Translation Studies (Chinese) from Leeds. She spent four years in Guizhou Province, where she worked at a rural teachers' college for Voluntary Service Overseas, and she still has strong links with that part of China. Esther works in both Asian Studies and Translation Studies, and has been teaching Chinese language and Chinese-English translation at Edinburgh University since 2004. Her interests include translation to and from Chinese, contemporary Chinese literature, the teaching of Chinese language and on southwest China.
She works as a translator, and her work includes The Good Women of China, Sky Burial, Miss Chopsticks. She is also involved in various dictionaries translation projects with HarperCollins and Oxford University. The Good Women of China (English version) was one of the very few translated works which became a million-copy bestseller.
Esther now lives in Edinburgh with her Chinese husband.
To obtain further information about Yu Dan, Yu Dan’s Thinking of The Analects of Confucius, please contact us directly.
Contact:
Daniel Watts
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Toby Eady
President
Toby Eady Associates Ltd.
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toby@tobyeady.demon.co.uk
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Australia
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Sam Humphreys
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