Erstwhile Series – serie

A radical thinker, Xunzi disagreed with Mencius on human nature. For him men are naturally evil. From this inverse assumption, he yet reached the same Mencian conclusion: moral education is paramount for society to function, and the ruler should be meritorious, protecting the people. This makes Xunzi a Confucianist, though Han Fei and Li Si, his students, were to subvert Confucian principles. From Xunzi, Mingyuan Hu selects and translates three treatises, illustrating his argument. This book is part of the Erstwhile Series.

Variously considered a Taoist and a cynic, Han Fei, himself a prince, has been seen as a forerunner to Machiavelli. At the end of the Warring States, when oratory mattered hugely, Han Fei, with a stutter, was the brain and the plume of the Legalist School. From Han Fei's oeuvre, Mingyuan Hu selects and translates two extracts encapsulating the thinking that so impressed Zheng, King of Qin, who later became the first emperor of China, and in whose prison Han Fei died drinking poison. This book is part of the Erstwhile Series.

The prodigious aristocrat Qu Yuan was a minister of Chu, a major power during the Warring States. Pressing for Vertical Alliance but not listened to, he was twice exiled. Bewailing affliction, he wrote verses in the Chu dialect, and liberated poetry from the four-syllable metre. Qu Yuan's vers libre, like his suicide, has been immortalised in East Asia, as one honours the Romantic poet and a wounded statesman, ill-treated and loyal to the end. Attribution to Qu Yuan has at times been disputed; some opuses stand emblematic. Two prose pieces and two poems are offered in a new translation by Mingyuan Hu. This book is part of the Erstwhile Series.

Elegance of personality, a peculiar notion of the Chinese literati, is encapsulated in the Shishuo Xinyu - character sketches from the fifth century of elevated, often eccentric, beings. Bygone archetypes of soaring individuality, poets, politicians, artists, and musicians here come in an ensemble of the eremitic and extravagant, selected from the Shishuo and translated by Mingyuan Hu. This book is part of the Erstwhile Series.