Funny anecdotes, conversations and gossips of ancient Chinese noblemen, written in ancient classical Chinese. This book allowed men who lived thousands of years ago to come to life. And it’s cool because even though the society has changed so much over time, I feel like their sense of humor is not really different from ours today. This aspect entertains me a lot
Unfortunately i think this is a book most suitable for Chinese native speakers and perhaps those somewhat trained in classical Chinese. I’m not sure if anyone will be able to translate the content properly, as there are so many Chinese word tricks and concepts for which I can’t think of any English equivalents.
This edition is fine for what it is - the characters are large and easily legible, the pronunciation of each character of the original texts is given in Mandarin Phonetic Symbols, and the annotations and translations into modern Chinese are fine. I'm not really sure where this copy even came from - it's clearly second hand, since there are penciled notes in the first several stories. But the problem is...
...I noticed at the end of book one that there was a story in the online text that wasn't in the print version, so I penciled it into the book. Then I saw that about half the stories of book 2 were missing...so I got a complete, unabridged edition (the San Min 三民書局 edition) the next day and switched immediately to that. I spent about half an hour marking the stories I'd already read so I could read all the ones in between not included in the edition I'd been reading.
I don't see any indication anywhere in or on this book that this is a [fairly greatly] abridged edition. They really should have made this clear in some prominent place.
Some of the omitted stories are indeed a bit complex, in spite of their extreme brevity; in one, the commentators have different opinions about the interpretation of the last sentence. Another made me wonder if the abridgment tried to sanitize the original a bit - it was about a psychoactive (and also toxic) drug compound, 五石散/寒食散, that was reportedly made more popular after publication of this anecdote, to the great detriment of a great many people over many years, and it was certainly responsible for numerous deaths before it was finally condemned and made illegal in the Song dynasty, according to an online source I checked.
I like reading complete editions, and all of the stories omitted from this edition that I've now read in the San Min edition have a kick that makes them well worth reading. So if you're going to bother reading the Shihshuo Xinyu in the first place, get the San Min or similar edition and read the whole thing! And you might want to read this in conjunction with my former teacher Professor Richard Mather's annotated translation. I've ordered it online and am still waiting for it with great anticipation.
Every educated Chinese should read this book and emulate the grace of ancient lifestyle. You need at least medium level ancient Chinese proficiency plus complete mastery of traditional Chinese characters.