Liezi Shuo: Yu Feng Er Xing De Zhe Si

by Tsai Chih Chung, Brian Bruya (Translator)

Part of the Traditional Chinese Culture series, this book is an illustrated adaptation of the Dao classics. It is one of the three great texts of philosophical Daoism, and the one with the most dispassionate wisdom and unaffected nature. Collected and popularized by the immensely popular Chinese illustrator Tsai Chih Chung, the book includes over 60 stories for the reader of today, bringing to life the spirit and philosophy of Daoism through cartoon panels with a text that is irreverently humorous yet replete with wisdom. It is a great and easy tool to learn Chinese classics.

138 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Tsai Chih Chung (蔡志忠) is a world-renowned cartoonist and popularizer of Chinese classics whose books have sold more than 40 millions copies worldwide. He first came to prominence through his award-winning animated movies and his immensely popular daily comic strips. When he turned his hand to the classics after a prolonged period of self-education, they were acclaimed by critics and shot to the top of the bestsellers lists.

Starting from the 1980s, Tsai created a series of Chinese comic books on ancient Chinese classics, like huangzi Speaks: The Music of Nature, Zen Speaks: Shouts of Nothingness, Confucius Speaks: Words to Live by, Sunzi Speaks: The Art of War, and The Tao Speaks: Lao Tzu's Whispers of Wisdom. Confucius, Lao Tzu, Zhuangzi, and Sunzi are widely credited as sages whose thoughts have played an important role in China's development. Tsai put his unique understanding and feelings of ancient thoughts into his cartoons, and added a modern interpretation of them, making boring ancient philosophies quite amusing as well as understandable. His works won a large number of adult readers for comic books, a market predominantly children-targeted. This series of comic books has hoarded great applause from readers both in Taiwan and Chinese mainland, with 4 million copies sold in Taiwan.

Differing from most Chinese parents, Tsai has a unique way of bringing up his daughter, stressing independence and self-reliance. His daughter even traveled to Japan by herself at the age of 12.With the influence of her father, his daughter has also become fond of cartoons. Her creativity and originality is comparable to that of her father, and many of her cartoons have been published as well. Tsai once made a comparison between human beings and wolves, stating that a parent wolf never teaches its children the necessary skills of survival, leaving the child with the challenge of acquired these skills on their own.

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Liezi is an oft-overlooked Daoist philosopher, but he was as fundamental in shaping Daojia (i.e. philosophical Daoism) as the more famous Zhuangzi and Laozi. In Tsai Chih Chung's (whose name under the pinyin Romanization is Zai Zhizhong) unparalleled masterful philosophical comic books, he makes the classic Chinese thought come alive to both the English and the Chinese reader. Tsai's books closely follow the original text, illustrating Liezi's parables and stories and rendering the classical Chinese into modern idiomatic Mandarin (which Brian Bruya then translates into modern American English).

A hearty recommendation to anyone wishing to explore the great sages of ancient China.

[Mary Catelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

A re-telling in graphic novel form of a foundational classic of Daoism.

Stories of learning to float on the wind, master archery, dreams and reality, the dismissal of good and evil, the acceptance of death, how artistic expression works. and more. Interesting introduction to Daoism -- or more, if you've already read Lao Tzu.