The Letter to Ren an and Sima Qian's Legacy

Stephen Durrant is professor emeritus of Chinese language and literature, University of Oregon. He is the author of The Cloudy Mirror: Tension and Conflict in the Writings of Sima Qian (State University of New York Press, 1995); coauthor of The Siren and the Sage: Knowledge and Wisdom in Ancient Greece and China (Cassell, 2000); cotranslator of Zuo Traditions / Zuozhuan (University of Washington Press, 2017); and coeditor of Early China / Ancient Greece: Thinking through Comparisons (State University of New York Press, 2002). Wai-yee Li is professor of Chinese literature at Harvard University. She is the author of The Readability of the Past in Early Chinese Historiography (Harvard University Asia Center, 2007) and Women and National Trauma in Late Imperial Chinese Literature (Harvard University Asia Center, 2014); cotranslator of Zuo Tradition / Zuozhuan (University of Washington Press, 2016); and coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of Classical Chinese Literature (1000 BCE-900 CE) (Oxford University Press, 2017). Michael Nylan is professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of The Five "Confucian" Classics (Yale University Press, 2001) and Yang Xiong and the Pleasures of Reading and Classical Learning in China (American Oriental Society, 2011), coauthor of Lives of Confucius: Civilization's Greatest Sage through the Ages (Doubleday, 2010); translator of Exemplary Figures (University of Washington Press, 2013) and The Canon of Supreme Mystery (SUNY Press, 1993) by Yang Xiong; and coeditor of Chang'an 26 BCE: An Augustan Age in China (University of Washington Press, 2014). Hans van Ess is professor of sinology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. He is the author of Die 101 wichtigsten Fragen. China [The 101 most important questions: China] (C. H. Beck, 2008), Hu Hong. Worte Kennen. Zhiyan [Hu Hong, knowing words ? Zhiyan] (Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2009), and Der Daoismus. Von Laozi bis heute [Taoism: From Laozi to today] (C. H. Beck 2011); coauthor of The Letter to Ren An and Sima Qian's Legacy (University of Washington Press, 2016); and cotranslator of The Grand Scribe's Records by Sima Qian, vol. 8 (Indiana University Press, 2008).