Library of Chinese Classics: The Three-Character Canon

297 pages
2016 first edition
China Translation Pubulishing

The Sanzi Jing, usually translated as the Three-Character Classic, has been a required text for all Chinese children and was used in Taiwan at least as late as the 1960s. Kids would recite it as a group, accompanied with the swaying of the body to give it a proper rhythm. It was written in the thirteenth century and usually attributed to Wang Yinglin (1223-1296), a renowned Confucian scholar. The "poem" consists of a series of couplets of three characters. The complete text is less than 1200 characters but in that limited space it manages to enumerate all of the salient features of the Confucian tradition. Children were required to memorize it, much as a Catholic Catechism might be, even before they could read and write.