Amazon.com description: Product Description: This valuable book collects 30 of the most influential writings that have shaped the Chinese as a people. While "Chinese" as an identity can be said to indicate a culture, a people, an ethnicity, a language and/or a citizenship, there is no doubt that the Chinese people commonly identify, and further unite, themselves with a shared historical and cultural heritage. The Chinese writings collected here represent the most outstanding intellectual, literary, artistic and spiritual elements of the Chinese culture and are known by heart among Chinese people all over the world. Dominating the Chinese psyche and reaching across all imagined and realistic political, ideological and/or ethnic boundaries, these writings offer a rare window for anyone who want to understand the Chinese and their fascinating cultural world.