What is the relevance of Spring and Autumn writing to the spirit of tradition?

When reading ancient books, Zuo Zhuan is often a must-have, because of its literary nature, and even more so because it is a model of both history and economics. People who talk about traditional culture traditionally like to use their own words to describe the spirit of tradition, but few think about it from the perspective of literature. In fact, the core of the traditional spirit is the unity of scripture and history, and the mutual use of each other.

Zuo Zhuan was originally a commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals, which is said to have been written by Zuo Qiu Ming, a native of Lu, and then became a book on its own, along with Gongyang Zhuan and Guliang Zhuan, which are known as the three biographies of the Spring and Autumn Annals. Said "Spring and Autumn", can not be separated from the Spring and Autumn righteousness and penmanship. One of the earliest chronicles was derived from many subtle "subtle words" by later generations in accordance with Confucian concepts, and highlighted through the vaguely worded historical pen, which in itself is a concentrated manifestation of the spirit of scripture and historiography as a body of work, and throughout the entire course of thought. Since the Spring and Autumn "Calligraphy" and "Calligraphic Examples" were firstly proposed by the Gongyang scholars, many people always wrongly regarded them as the patent of the present-day school of literature, not realizing that Zuozhuan also talked about the penmanship. Du Wei in his "Spring and Autumn Annals of Zuozhuan" explains both scriptural and historical examples, which fully demonstrates that it is unreasonable to neglect the scriptural component of Zuozhuan. In addition, we should not forget that the term "micro speech" originated from Liu Xin, an ancient writer who honored Zuo Zhuan, in his article "Moving the Book to Let Dr. Tai Chang", i.e., "and Husband's death and micro speech is extinct, and seventy sons' death and the great righteousness is not good". Although in modern times, with the decline of Confucianism, the study of the Spring and Autumn Annals and Zuo Zhuan gradually only say its historiography and literary value, but they said that the method of righteousness and penmanship communicated with the history of the classics and engraved in the spirit of the tradition, so the recent person, Koo Hung-ming, translated and wrote "Spring and Autumn Annals" in English is to "the spirit of the Chinese people" for the title of the book.

The Qing Dynasty historian Zhang Xuecheng had asserted that "the six sutras are all history", and in fact the Twenty-four Histories are not "sutras" without the name of "sutra"? The Spring and Autumn Annals honors the king and rejects the barbarians, and it is the 24 Histories that is based on the orthodox thinking of Confucianism, which has been the center of the political, historical, and cultural outlook for thousands of years. The Spring and Autumn Annals praises and denigrates the beautiful and the thorny and maintains the Confucian order, while the Twenty-Four Histories also promotes loyalty and filial piety and helps to eliminate the evil and the treacherous. Some people say that the Twenty-Four Histories is the family history of the emperor, but is the Spring and Autumn Annals not the family history of the king of Lu? As for the implicit form of Spring and Autumn writing style and the explicit form of "the gentleman said" to elaborate the great meaning pioneered by Zuo Zhuan, they are inherited by Shiji, Han Shu and other historical books. It can be seen, in the "spring and autumn", "zuozhuan" there, the history of history and the scripture is and pass into one, the later generations of the scripture, history books are no exception. From the rise and fall of the world to the ranking of seniority, the spirit of our tradition is accumulated, transmitted and unfolded in the form of historical stories. It is no surprise, then, that Chinese thinkers and historians are often both in one person.

Historians have traditionally been called "straight brush" and "crooked brush", which is clearly derived from the Spring and Autumn brushwork. The historian's vocation is to write straight, but the historical materials are invariably branded with the writer's tendency, so that the preserved "straight pen" has become a special form of "curved pen". Moreover, from the level of literature, "straight strokes" and "crooked strokes" constitute rhetoric, so many scholars since Hu Shih have even recognized the Spring and Autumn brushwork as the earliest germ of rhetoric in China. This kind of rhetoric is not only embodied in the canonical thought, but also integrated into the folk thought. What we usually call "concealing evil and promoting good", "ordering the young and the old", "stopping at the right moment" and so on, are all about shaping a modest gentleman and a state of etiquette with a subtle sense of propriety. As we all know, Zuo Zhuan emphasizes "etiquette", and often uses "straight strokes" to whip things that violate "etiquette" to the fullest extent. Of course, it also follows the Spring and Autumn brushwork "for the honored one, for the virtuous one, for the relatives of the taboo" of the "qu pen" principle, some scruples.

In recent decades, there have been many translations of Zuozhuan, including Mr. Yang Bojun's Spring and Autumn Zuozhuan and Mr. Shen Yucheng's Zuozhuan Translation, which are the best ones in China at present. Mr. Yang's commentary has absorbed the academic achievements of the predecessors and corrected the misunderstandings over the past thousands of years, which is a typical collection of writings; Mr. Shen's translation is the sister of Yang's commentary, which is accurate and easy to understand, brilliant and readable, and very much has its own characteristics. I think one should read the Zuo Zhuan through its literary nature and return to the spirit of tradition reflected through its scriptural and historical musings. (Wufei)