Additional information
by Feiya Chen (Editor)
The Tang dynasty (618-907) was the golden age of classical Chinese poetry. Getting familiar with Tang poems is the key to understanding classical Chinese poetry. However, there are important aspects that English translations cannot convey, such as rhyming and tonal patterns, a good knowledge of which is indispensable to appreciate Tang poems properly. This book is compiled for those who want to go beyond the English translations and look at the Chinese originals. The full text of all the poems in Three Hundred Tang Poems is presented here in Chinese characters together with Pinyin, so that the readers would be able to read them out before learning all the characters involved. This volume also comes with a brief account of rhyme schemes and tonal patterns, which had matured in Tang poems. Every poem in this book is annotated with the rhyme class and tonal pattern employed, and the readers could gain insight into how these 300 classical poems were composed. With all these features, this book can serve as an introduction to the fundamentals of classical Chinese poetry, including abundant examples showing how rhyming and tonal patterns were used in the best known classical Chinese poems.
