Contents Briefing

At a time when world cultures are being driven into convergence by the predominant trend of globalization, it is of great significance to review and reconstruct the numerous touching historical scenes of cultural exchanges between China and the rest of the world.

This book recounts the grand history of exchanges, contacts and convergence between Chinese and foreign cultures through the ocean and continental Silk Roads, on the material, spiritual and institutional levels, and in the form of migration, trade, mutual visits of official envoys, tribute paying, exchange of overseas students, missionary activities,wars,etc.Starting from the possible emigrant cultural export by Chinese ancestors to neighboring island nations before the submerging of land bridges over ten thousand years ago, the book goes on to depict stories from the overseas spread of the shouldered stone adzes, to people of the Yin Dynasty crossing the Pacific Ocean to America for cultural transmission, from Monk Xuanzang's epic journey to India in search of Buddhist sutras, to Matteo Ricci's propagation in China.

Laying emphasis on actual records instead of theoretical interpretations,the book,which has more than one hundred illustrations, offers its readers a high degree of readability and a real sense of history.

It is the first systematic and comprehensive work on Sino-Foreign cultural exchanges in China.

Author Profile

Wang Jienan, a native of Yixin, Jiangsu, was born in 1943. He graduated from Beijing University in 1966, majoring in Eastern Languages and Cultures. He is a professor and MA supervisor of Nanjing International Studies University, and concurrently serves as the Deputy Secretary-general of China Southeast Asia Society, member of Jiangsu Writers’ Association, member of China Association of Sino-Foreign Relations History, and Council Member of Zheng He Studies Society. His monographs include: History of Cultural Exchanges between China and Southeast Asia (as one of the hundred volumes of The General History of Chinese Culture), The Two Thousand Years of Sino-Myanmar Friendship, The Alaungpaya Dynasty of Myanmar, and Thakin Kotawkamain, a Patriotic Poet of Myanmar. His translation works include: A Eulogy to Irrawaddy-Yangtse Friendship, and Sino-Myanmar Relations in Four Stages (co-translation). He has also published dozens of articles.