Chinese Civilization

28 hrs. 11 min.

Miscellaneous

Language Russian

Author Vladimir Malyavin

Narrator Oborotov Yury

Description

The book is devoted to China—the country of an ancient and organically complete culture, the homeland of remarkable technical achievements and the multi-colored beauty of fine arts.
Based on the latest findings of world science, long-term research, and finally on the author’s own experience of immersing himself in the amazing world of China, the well-known Russian sinologist Vladimir Malyavin offers the reader a complete and original view of the nature of Chinese civilization. This is the first systematic description in our country of the way of life and spiritual values of the Chinese people.

About the author:

Vladimir Malyavin — author of numerous works on the history and culture of China, translations of classical works by Chinese philosophers. Abroad, his publications on the history of Russian culture and contemporary civilization are known. He worked at Moscow State University and at the Academy of Sciences; he conducted research in Japan and China; he taught at the University of Paris and in a number of U.S. universities. Now he is a professor at Tamkang University in Taiwan.
Vladimir Vyacheslavovich Malyavin was born in 1950 in the Shcherlaputinsky Lane of Moscow, and grew up among Tatar and Jewish children, so he considers himself a true Russian. By training, he is a historian: he graduated in 1972 from the Institute of Oriental Languages, then spent a year in Singapore, where he loved to chat with Chinese, Americans, French, Germans, and Japanese in their languages—so his sense of his own Russian calling grew even stronger. For fourteen years he carried the burden of teaching at Moscow State University, wishing to serve academic science honestly. As a result, he mastered a dozen lecture courses and published more than a dozen books on the history, philosophy, art, and religion of the countries of the Far East, as well as the typology of world culture. Later he moved to work within the Academy of Sciences system: first he was part of the Institute of Ethnography, and then (and to this day) — at the Institute of the Far East and the Institute of Man.
In 1988 at Moscow State University he defended his doctoral dissertation devoted to ideology in early medieval China. From time to time he engaged in research and lectured in different countries: Japan, China, the United States, France, and others. And as a result, there emerged a strange hybrid: a person trained in the West, professionally studying the East, and living in Russia.
Of his published books, the most well known are: “The Fall of the Ancient Empire” (1983), “Zhuangzi” (1985), “Traditional Aesthetics in the Countries of the Far East” (1987), “Aphorisms of Old China” (1988), “Confucius” (the ZHZL series, 1992), “An Anthology of Daoist Philosophy” (1994). Several more major works are being prepared for publication, including a new translation of the Daoist canons “Zhuangzi” and “Liezi,” a study of symbolism in Chinese art: “Twilight Dao. Spirit and Life in China in the 17th century.” He is also known as a multilingual translator of literary and scientific works, and he prefers all kinds of misfits and marginal figures, like Ezra Pound, Antonin Artaud, or Chinese eccentrics.