Library of Chinese Classics: Zhuang Zi

Library of Chinese Classics Chinese-English: Zhuangzi
Translated into English by Wang Rongpei
Translated into Modern Chinese by Qin Xuqing and Sun Yongchang

Book dimensions 960 x 640, 1/16, hardcover, two volumes

Hunan People's Publishing House and Foreign Languages Press, 1999

ISBN: 7543820870

Zhuangzi, also known as The Holy Canon of Nanhua, is a Taoist classic written by the Warring States period philosopher Zhuangzi and his students. The book is composed of 33 chapters including 7 Inner Chapters, 15 Outer Chapters, and 11 Miscellaneous Chapters.
In this book, Zhuangzi inherited and developed Laozi's viewpoint of "the ways of Tao being conditioned by the self-so." Taking Tao as the origin of the world, he held that Tao is self-sufficient and eternal whereas the difference between things is relative. To correspond with this world outlook, Zhuangzi advocated an outlook on life of "non-action in face of nature," which recommended maintaining personal freedom of body and mind, and of attaining a spiritual plane of complete liberty and of harmony between man and nature.
The Zhuangzi is one of the most celebrated texts of the Chinese tradition impressive for both its bold philosophical imagination and its striking literary style. Before being translated into modern Chinese, the original Chinese text of the present edition has been checked and punctuated with reference to Guo Qingfan's A Variorum Zhuangzi. The English translation, which is its latest complete edition, has been accomplished with reference to the existing complete as well as selected English translations of the book.