This book attempts to
deconstruct certain key clusters of Chinese characters and
words, centering on themes such as war and peace, kith and
kin, male and female, rites and rituals, pleasure and
leisure to make them yield fascinating tales about Chinese
culture and history in which these words are embedded and
which they at the same time encapsulate. The Chinese
language, Chinese history and culture are presented as one
long woven bolt of silk (for which China has historically
been noted), with the written language conceived as the warp
while the history and culture the weft. In this process of
linguistic exploration, the book shows in what ways the
Chinese written language may be said to be unique as well as
to reveal, amongst other things, certain aspects of:
• ancient Chinese
religion, cosmology, philosophy, political theory, law,
medicine, astronomy, physics, geography;
• their grasp, on the part of the ancient Chinese people, of
human reproduction, biology and physiology, psychology,
biochemistry, even neurology of the brain;
• what constitutes Chinese identity, the core values of
Chinese culture, the essential glue holding their society
together;
• their daily existence, such as their food and drink, the
houses they lived in, the furniture they used, their chief
modes of transportation, etc.
About the Author
Keekok Lee
was born and brought up in South East Asia. She received, in
the main, a colonial education which did its very best to
stamp out any knowledge or interest in the mother tongues
and cultures of the children under its charge. Fortunately,
in her case, it did not quite succeed, and she managed,
against such odds, to sustain a life-long commitment to
learning about Chinese culture. She is a graduate of the
University of Singapore (now the National University of
Singapore), Oxford University and the University of
Manchester. She taught philosophy at the University of
Manchester for many years until 1999. She became fi rst
Visiting, then Honorary Chair in Philosophy at the
University of Lancaster. Currently, she is Honorary Research
Fellow in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at
the University of Manchester. Her numerous publications –
monographs as well as journal articles – cover a wide range
of philosophical areas, including Chinese philosophy.
