Why this new translation is so good
Given that Chuang Tzu is one of the greatest philosophers and literary stylists of the Asian world, the existing editions and translations of his work are baffling. For the most part they ramble, blandly and at times incoherently. Now and then an unusual story impresses you, but even then you never enjoy it for its literary flair.
This new translation is groundbreaking in three ways:
It presents you with Chuang Tzu’s actual book. Whereas other translations mix Chuang Tzu’s writing up with other people’s comments and stories, this new translation is the first to remove all that clutter and reveal Chuang Tzu’s elegantly structured book. (See: How Chuang Tzu’s long-lost book was discovered and excavated. Note that I move the omitted material to an appendix, so you can decide for yourself if I am right to remove it.)
It presents you with Chuang Tzu’s crisp, clear, poetic writing. Whereas other translations play freely with the original text (they tend to paraphrase and rewrite), this new translation adheres to the grammatical structure (the line structure, the phrasing, the exact imagery) of the text. The result is that whereas other translations ramble semi-coherently, now like an old drunk with pretensions of grandeur, now like a philosophy undergraduate dosed up on speed, this new translation presents you with Chuang Tzu’s crisp, clear, poetic writing. (See below for examples.)
It provides a running commentary. Chuang Tzu’s stories are witty, funny, and profound, but to see this we often need to know the cultural context of the stories, and we often need some interpretive guidance. This translation is the first to have a running commentary that provides this context and guidance. Many stories in Chuang Tzu’s book have never been coherently or deeply interpreted by anyone, until now. (For a taste of the running commentary, see the excerpts in the preview section of this website.)
Examples of Chuang Tzu’s crisp, clear, poetic writing
The northern darkness (take 1)
The northern darkness (take 1)
Chuang Tzu’s book opens with a description of a mythically large bird emerging from the northern darkness. In Professor Burton Watson’s celebrated 1968 translation, it goes like this:
In the northern darkness there is a fish and his name is K’un. The K’un is so huge I don’t know how many thousand li he measures. He changes and becomes a bird whose name is P’eng. The back of the P’eng measures I don’t know how many thousand li across and, when he rises up and flies off, his wings are like clouds all over the sky. When the sea begins to move, this bird sets off for the southern darkness, […].¹
There is nothing obviously wrong with this. The pace is abrupt and disjointed, but perhaps that’s Chuang Tzu’s style? It isn’t. Here’s what Chuang Tzu wrote:
北冥有魚 north dark has fish
其名為鯤 its name is kun
鯤之大不知其幾千里也 kun’s size—not know its how-many thousand miles
化而為鳥 changes and is bird
其名為鵬 its name is peng
鵬之背不知其幾千里也 peng’s back—not know its how-many thousand miles
怒而飛 rouses and flies
其翼若垂天之雲 its wings like drooping-heaven clouds
是鳥也 this bird—
海運則將徙於南冥 ocean shifts, then will migrate to south dark
Which I translate as:
In the northern darkness there is a fish.
His name is Speck of Roe.
Speck of Roe’s size? It measures I don’t know how many thousands of miles.
He changes and is now a bird.
His name is Of a Flock.
Of a Flock’s back—it spans I don’t know how many thousands of miles.
He rouses vigorously and takes to flight,
his wings like clouds arcing across the heavens.
This bird—
When the tide turns, he’ll migrate to the southern darkness.
Things to note:
Chuang Tzu’s writing is poetic. His lines have a sparse, spacious, majestic rhythm. He is, after all, narrating a great mystery, a monumental event: the emergence of Of a Flock from the northern darkness. Note how Watson’s writing lacks this spacious, majestic rhythm. Where there should be a pause, Watson rambles on with an ‘and’. Where Chuang Tzu’s lines parallel and mirror each other, Watson’s lines vary and bleed into each other.
Watson neglects to translate the names of the fish and the bird. Chuang Tzu grabs our attention with the surprising contrast between a tiny fish (Speck of Roe) and its being who knows how many thousands of miles in size. Watson just presents us with a huge fish that has a weird foreign name.
If you’re wondering what on earth this story is all about, see my interpretation here.
The northern darkness (take 2)
As we’ve just seen, Watson and I translate the opening words of the book—bei ming 北冥—as ‘the northern darkness’. Bei 北 means north, ming 冥 means dark. Simple. But because there is a fish in this northern darkness, Professor Richard John Lynn, writing in 2022, decides to rewrite the phrase as ‘the North Sea’.² Because he imagines this northern darkness to be an oblivion, Professor Brook Ziporyn, writing in 2020, rewrites it as ‘the Northern Oblivion’.³ Confronted with one of the best opening lines in world literature, Lynn and Ziporyn shrugged, crossed it out, and replaced it with—. One wonders why. As Professor Harbsmeier explains:
[Chuang Tzu] does not begin by talking of The North Ocean, which would be plain. He begins enigmatically “The Northern Dark” and keeps the reader in the dark about the mysteries of this “Dark”. Since an extraordinarily large fish seems to live there, it comes to look as if this “Dark” would have to be a very large sea or ocean. That indeed, it turns out, must have been the reference. But what interests us here is not what the text refers to but what exactly the text says. We are interested in exactly how the text manages to convey the reference. We are interested in the aesthetics and the rhetorics of the text, not only in its ‘ultimate meaning’ as such.⁴
A translator, to deserve the name, needs to be committed to the grammar—the aesthetics and rhetorics—of the original text. Why do Lynn and Ziporyn rewrite the text? Because they cannot make sense of it. They are coal miners who, in their very first shovel of dirt, are confused to find a lump of gold. They shrug, discard it, and place a lump of coal in the bucket.
To translate Chuang Tzu, you need the artisan’s ability to recognise and work with gold.
The cook butchering an ox
In Chapter 3, a lord describes a cook butchering an ox. In Professor Victor Mair’s celebrated 1994 translation, it goes like this:
Wherever
His hand touched,
His shoulder leaned,
His foot stepped,
His knee nudged,
the flesh would fall away with a swishing sound. Each slice of the cleaver was right in tune, zip zap! He danced in rhythm to “The Mulberry Grove”, moved in concert with the strains of “The Managing Chief.”⁵
The first half of this makes no sense. Wherever his foot stepped the ox’s flesh fell away? Not surprisingly, Chuang Tzu wrote no such thing. Let’s look at what Chuang Tzu wrote:
手 之 所 觸 hand going to where it pushes
肩 之 所 倚 shoulder going to where it leans
足 之 所 履 foot going to where it steps
膝 之 所 踦 knee going to where it inclines
砉 然 whoosh so (the sound of flesh separating from bone)
嚮 然 guiding so
奏 刀 playing the knife
騞 然 swoosh so (the sound of slicing through meat)
莫 不 中 音 none not in tune
合 於 桑 林 之 舞 joining with the mulberry grove dance
乃 中 經 首 之 會 now among the principal chiefs gathering
Which I translate as:
As his hand touches
and shoulder leans
and foot steps
and knee bends—
sher-wooshhh!
(he guides, he plays the knife)
sher-wishhh!
Not a sound not in tune.
In time with the Mulberry-Grove Dance.
In step with the Sacred-Chiefs Corroboree.
Things to note:
The lord is describing an exquisite performance of high culture. The first four lines set a steady tempo, and describe the cook dancing with the ox. The tempo then doubles, and as the knife slices here, and there, we realise that the cook isn’t just dancing, he’s creating music.
Note how Mair’s words translate almost none of this. He does provide some rhythm at the start, but far from describing an exquisite dance, Mair has the cook wrestling with the ox, with the flesh somehow being swept off the ox whenever the cook’s hand touches, and shoulder leans, and foot steps, and knee nudges. The quick two-step rhythm of the middle section, and the imagery of guiding and playing the knife, isn’t translated at all. In the closing two lines the grammar has been altered and the parallelism lost.
Incidentally, in Mair’s translation the lord’s name is Lord Wenhui. In mine it’s Cultured Benevolent Lord. ‘Cultured Benevolent’ (Wenhui) is a posthumous title, and Chuang Tzu has chosen this title for a reason. He is comically putting a cultured, benevolent lord down into the bloody, grimy kitchen. Mair neglects to translate this, and thus robs the reader of the comedic value of the story.
No self
At the end of Chapter 1.3, I translate a line as, ‘A consummate person has no self.’ Instead of ‘no self’, Professor Brook Ziporyn, in his celebrated 2020 translation, opts for ‘no definite identity’.³ The issue here is how to best translate the sinograph ji 己. The straightforward meaning of ji is ‘self’. Ziporyn acknowledges this, but translates ji as ‘definite identity’ because he doubts the reader’s ability to make proper sense of what it means to have no self. He worries that the reader might interpret ‘having no self’ to mean ‘mental disintegration, schizophrenia with multiple personalities, immature lack of self-knowledge or principle, or else something like selflessness in the moral sense of unselfishness and altruism.’⁶
Curiously, Ziporyn is unaware that ‘having no definite identify’ might itself be read as having schizophrenia with multiple personalities, or, say, being a conman. Bizarrely, given his long list of remotely possible interpretations, he fails to note a very obvious one: in mainstream English ‘no self’ does mean something very much like ‘no definite identity’. The term ‘no self’ has entered English via Buddhist philosophy, as a translation of the Pali word anatta. Now, whether the Buddha’s anatta (no self) maps well onto Chuang Tzu’s wu ji (no self), and whether either term is best interpreted by the phrase ‘no definite identity’—these are puzzles one might ponder. But to worry that English-speaking folk might interpret ‘having no self’ as ‘having schizophrenia with multiple personalities’—that’s just head-in-the-clouds intellectualising that has completely lost sight of we living breathing English-speakers. By translating wu ji as no definite identity, rather than no self, Ziporyn produces an unnecessarily wordy and abstract translation that fails to translate both the aesthetics and the meaning of Chuang Tzu’s writing.
We discussed this type of error—the error of disregarding the aesthetics and rhetorics of the text—above (the northern darkness, take 2). But because this error is so rife in translations of Chuang Tzu’s writing, indulge me as I illustrate it with an English example. Robert Frost opens his famous poem with the line, ‘Two roads diverged in a yellow wood’. What these words mean is that Mr Frost faced a choice. Imagine, now, that you want to translate this line into Chinese. Do you translate the line into the Chinese equivalent of ‘Two roads diverged in a yellow wood’? Or, doubting your reader’s ability to make sense of the line (fearing, perhaps, that your reader might read the line as a comment on the failure of The Department of Forestry to provide adequate signage), do you translate it into the Chinese equivalent of ‘I faced a choice’?
Were you to opt for ‘I faced a choice’, you would rob your Chinese reader of the opportunity to enjoy and make sense of Robert Frost’s poetry. Your translation (not really a translation; more a lame rendition) would cause your Chinese reader to wonder, Why is Robert Frost praised as being a great poet?
This and that (take 1)
To get a sense of how small errors, of the type we’ve been looking at in the examples above, compound to produce rambling, confounding, indistinct prose, we need to look at a longer stretch of text.
In Chapter 2, Chuang Tzu observes that when two people disagree, each affirms what the other refutes and refutes what the other affirms. Not wanting to get caught up in this intractable confusion, he proposes to use clarity. Here’s Professor Brook Ziporyn’s version of Chuang Tzu being clear:
There is no thing that is not a ‘that.’ There is no thing that is not a ‘this.’ One is oneself also a ‘that,’ an other, but this is not something one can directly see. Rather, it is known through the understanding, which thus says ‘Thatness’ emerges from ‘thisness,’ and ‘thisness’ follows from ‘thatness.’ This is its theory of the simultaneous generation of the ‘this’ and the ‘that.’ However, by the very same token, it can say that their simultaneous generation means also their simultaneous demise, and vice versa. When it affirms either one, it simultaneously finds it has denied it; when it denies either one, it simultaneously finds it has affirmed it. By going along with the affirmation it goes along with the denial; by going along with the denial it goes along with the affirmation.
Thus the Sage does not proceed from any one of these alone but instead lets them all bask in the broad daylight of Heaven. This is also a way of going along with the rightness of each ‘this,’ going along with ‘thisness’ itself. For to be a ‘this’ is in fact also to be a ‘that,’ and every ‘that’ is also a ‘this.’ ‘THAT’ is then itself already both ‘this’ and ‘not-this,’ both a right and a wrong. But ‘THIS’ is also itself already both ‘this’ and ‘not-this,’ both a right and a wrong.³
So bad are things in the closed club of Classical Chinese scholarship that academics praise this contorted, obscurantist babble as being exceptionally good writing. Professor Franklin Perkins of the University of Hawai’i thinks it is so good, he finds it ‘hard to imagine that a translation of the Zhuangzi can get any better’.⁷ Professor Perkins, strain your imagination no more, for the unimaginable has been done! Behold:
No thing isn’t a that (over there).
No thing isn’t a this (here).
Of course, we don’t see things from over there;
we know them from here.
Which is why it is said: That arises from this; this in turn goes by that. (The theory of the co-birthing of that and this.)
Nevertheless,
when from one perspective a thing is labelled a birth,
from another it’s labelled a death.
When from one perspective a thing is labelled a death,
from another it’s labelled a birth.
When from one perspective a label is affirmed as allowable,
from another it’s rejected as unallowable.
When from one perspective a label is rejected as unallowable,
from another it’s affirmed as allowable.
Which is to say:
When going by this or that aspect of a thing someone says, It’s x,
going by a different aspect someone else retorts, It’s not.
When going by this or that aspect of a thing someone says, It’s not x,
going by a different aspect someone else retorts, It’s x.
Because of this, the sage doesn’t walk these routes, but instead illuminates them by the light of heaven.
This too is to go by this or that aspect of a thing and say, It’s x.
She sees that the thing she calls this is also a that,
that the thing she calls that is also a this,
that over there others say of everything whatsoever, It’s x, It’s not x,
just as here she says of everything whatsoever, It’s x, It’s not x.
Translated correctly, we see that Chuang Tzu isn’t babbling incoherently, we see that he is doing what he said he would do: he’s using clarity. He’s presenting a clear analysis of the situation and a clear method for navigating it, and he’s doing it with artistic flair.
He begins with the straightforward observation that anything we care to identify is both a this and a that. For example, whereas I, from here, point to the cup in your hand and call it ‘that cup’, you, from over there, point to the cup and call it ‘this cup’. He then acknowledges that of course we don’t see things from the other person’s point of view; we know things from our point of view. (For me, the cup in my hand is ‘this’ cup, and, in turn, the cup in your hand is ‘that’ cup.) This is what causes us to argue—not about this and that (we all see clearly that the cup in our hand is both a this and a that), but about pretty much every other label (we almost never see that the thing we call x is also not x). Nevertheless, just as the cup is both a this and a that, anything we care to identify is both x and not x. The thing I label birth, you label death, and when you label a thing death, I disagree and say it’s a birth. The label I allow, you don't, and the label you allow, I don't. What I call x, you say isn't x, and what you say is x, I say isn't. So instead of getting caught up in this activity of negating others, the sage illuminates that the thing in question is both x and not x: she sees that from here the thing is x, and that from there the thing is not x. Simple. Clear.
(For a more thorough discussion of this passage and the context it appears in, see this excerpt from the book.)
~
As good as my translation is compared to the previous translations, let me be the first to acknowledge that it's a lumbering elephant of a thing compared to Chuang Tzu's lean and nimble gazelle-like writing. Whereas I write:
No thing isn’t a that (over there).
No thing isn’t a this (here).
[…]
When from one perspective a thing is labelled a birth,
from another it’s labelled a death.
When from one perspective a thing is labelled a death,
from another it’s labelled a birth.
When from one perspective a label is affirmed as allowable,
from another it’s rejected as unallowable.
When from one perspective a label is rejected as unallowable,
from another it’s affirmed as allowable.
Which is to say:
When going by this or that aspect of a thing someone says, It’s x,
going by a different aspect someone else retorts, It’s not.
When going by this or that aspect of a thing someone says, It’s not x,
going by a different aspect someone else retorts, It’s x.
[…]
[The sage] sees that the thing she calls this is also a that,
that the thing she calls that is also a this,
that over there others say of everything whatsoever, It’s x, It’s not x,
just as here she says of everything whatsoever, It’s x, It’s not x.
Chuang Tzu writes:
物 無 非 彼 things: none not that
物 無 非 是 things: none not this
[…]
方 生 方 死 fang birth, fang death
方 死 方 生 fang death, fang birth
方 可 方 不 可 fang valid, fang not valid
方 不 可 方 可 fang not valid, fang valid
因 是 因 非 yin this, yin not
因 非 因 是 yin not, yin this
[…]
是 亦 彼 也 This also is that
彼 亦 是 也 That also is this
彼 亦 一 是 非 That also: one this / not
此 亦 一 是 非 Here also: one this / not
Fang 方 : from a perspective.
Yin 因 : according to some specified or assumed criterion or aspect.
Note the pictorial beauty of Chuang Tzu’s sinographs: the brevity and symmetry. See how each phrase links effortlessly to the next, how this writing zips along with the breathtaking pizzazz of a tightly choreographed swing-dance.
Note too that this text is leading up to the metaphor of the pivot of the path: the metaphor of a hinge that swings freely, now this way, now that. (See: The art of harmonising.) The tight symmetry and balance of Chuang Tzu’s writing reflects that metaphor brilliantly. This is literature of the highest order. The form of the writing reflects the content of the writing perfectly. The form and the content align to create optimal meaning.
It’s a shame that my translation is so wordily cumbersome. Although I’ve translated something of the poetic form, there’s simply no avoiding it: I’ve sacrificed poetic form for meaning. Had my priorities been reversed and I’d sacrificed meaning for poetic form, I’d have written this:
No thing isn’t a that.
No thing isn’t a this.
[…]
I say birth. You say death.
I say death. You say birth.
I say OK. You say not OK.
I say not OK. You say OK.
What I affirm, you refute.
What I refute, you affirm.
[…]
A this is a that.
A that is a this.
There it’s this and that.
Here it’s that and this.
This translates the punch and rhythm, and does a fair job of translating the meaning. My wordy translation translates the actual grammar and meaning, and does only a modest job of translating the rhythm. Each translation translates an aspect of Chuang Tzu’s writing that the other does not. If these lines were a stand-alone piece I’d opt for the punchy translation, but because they exist in the larger context of a developing argument I’ve opted for the wordy translation. It more accurately and clearly communicates the grammatical and philosophical meaning, and it does a much better job of linking into the surrounding argument.
So, I’ve opted for meaning over rhythm. I’ve made this choice willingly—and yes, I lament the loss of rhythm. Chuang Tzu’s ideas help me to live a happier life, but I don’t go about my day saying to myself, ‘When going by this or that aspect of a thing someone says, It’s x, going by a different aspect someone else retorts, It’s not.’ Too many words! Instead, when I find myself bumping up against others I utter to myself, ‘From here this, from there that.’ This is closer to the rhythm, the rhetorical power, of Chuang Tzu’s words:
因是因非
Yin shi, yin fei.
Be do, be bop.
Tomaytoe, tomahtoe.
From here this, from there that.
(When going by this or that aspect of a thing someone says, It’s x, going by a different aspect someone else retorts, It’s not.)
This and that (take 2)
Let’s look at yet another translation of the text we looked at in the previous section. In Professor A. C. Graham’s landmark 1981 translation, it goes like this:
No thing is not ‘other’, no thing is not ‘it’. If you treat yourself too as ‘other’ they do not appear, if you know of yourself you know of them. Hence it is said:
‘ “Other” comes out from “it”, “it” likewise goes by “other” ’,
the opinion that ‘it’ and ‘other’ are born simultaneously. However,
‘Simultaneously with being alive one dies’,
and simultaneously with dying one is alive, simultaneously with being allowable something becomes unallowable and simultaneously with being unallowable it becomes allowable. If going by circumstance that’s it then going by circumstance that’s not, if going by circumstance that’s not then going by circumstance that’s it. This is why the sage does not take this course, but opens things up to the light of Heaven; his too is a ‘That’s it’ which goes by circumstance.
* * *
What is It is also Other, what is Other is also It. There they say ‘That’s it, that’s not’ from one point of view, here we say ‘That’s it, that’s not’ from another point of view.⁸
To save you scrolling up to the previous section, here’s my translation of the same text:
No thing isn’t a that (over there).
No thing isn’t a this (here).
Of course, we don’t see things from over there;
we know them from here.
Which is why it is said: That arises from this; this in turn goes by that. (The theory of the co-birthing of that and this.)
Nevertheless,
when from one perspective a thing is labelled a birth,
from another it’s labelled a death.
When from one perspective a thing is labelled a death,
from another it’s labelled a birth.
When from one perspective a label is affirmed as allowable,
from another it’s rejected as unallowable.
When from one perspective a label is rejected as unallowable,
from another it’s affirmed as allowable.
Which is to say:
When going by this or that aspect of a thing someone says, It’s x,
going by a different aspect someone else retorts, It’s not.
When going by this or that aspect of a thing someone says, It’s not x,
going by a different aspect someone else retorts, It’s x.
Because of this, the sage doesn’t walk these routes, but instead illuminates them by the light of heaven.
This too is to go by this or that aspect of a thing and say, It’s x.
She sees that the thing she calls this is also a that,
that the thing she calls that is also a this,
that over there others say of everything whatsoever, It’s x, It’s not x,
just as here she says of everything whatsoever, It’s x, It’s not x.
I have a deep respect for Graham’s translation. It stands head and shoulders above all the others, and my translation stands on its shoulders. There are a number of ways in which my translation improves on Graham’s, but here I’ll focus on just one.
The sinographs that I translate as this and that—shi 是 and bi 彼—Graham translates as ‘it’ and ‘other’ (and It and Other). And the sinographs that I translate as It’s x, It’s not x —shi 是 and fei 非—Graham translates as that’s it, that’s not.
Graham and I do not disagree about what these sinographs mean. We translate them differently, but there is no ambiguity or mystery of meaning in play. The meaning is clear and agreed on. The only issue here is how to best translate this meaning into English.
The clear, agreed-on meaning of these sinographs is: (1) shi 是 and bi 彼 mean ‘this (here)’ and ‘that (over there)’. For example: I refer to the cup in your hand as ‘that’ cup; you refer to it as ‘this’ cup. (2) Shi 是 and fei 非 mean to assert of a thing, ‘Yes, that thing is the thing in question’, or ‘No, that thing is not the thing in question’. For example: in a conversation about what a cup is, I point to a thing and say, Shi 是 (It’s a cup); you point to the thing and say, Fei 非 (It’s not a cup).
Graham acknowledges that his translations—it, other; that’s it, that’s not—are ‘ugly’ and ‘awkward’. He resorts to these ugly and awkward translations because he interprets Chuang Tzu’s argument to hinge on the accidental linguistic feature of Classical Chinese that to say of a thing, Shi 是 (It’s x, which Graham translates as, That’s it), is the same as saying, Shi 是 (This, which Graham translates as, It). Given his interpretation, Graham is obliged to create a translation that translates this linguistic feature. His solution is creative: ‘that’s it’ (shi 是) echoes ‘it’ (shi 是). The problem with this solution, however, is that it produces a translation that doesn’t make sense. (Even though I know what he’s wanting to say, when I read his translation the meaning slips from view and the words swirl meaninglessly.)
I disagree with Graham’s interpretation of Chuang Tzu’s argument. To my mind Chuang Tzu’s argument does not hinge on the accidental linguistic feature of Classical Chinese that the word for saying of a thing, It’s x (Shi 是), is the same as the word for referring to a thing as ‘this’ (shi 是). That’s certainly a connotation that’s in play, but it’s not the argument. His argument is this: just as we easily see that the things we refer to as ‘this’ and ‘that’ are not in themselves a this or that, so too in regard to the things we refer to as being x (a cup, right, etc.) and not x. This interpretation of the argument frees me to translate shi 是 as, now, it’s x, and now, this.
Given my interpretation of Chuang Tzu’s argument, the words that Graham uses—it, other; that’s it, that’s not—simply don’t do the job of conveying Chuang Tzu’s argument. The readily-comprehended simplicity of ‘this’ and ‘that’ is completely lost—and along with it, Chuang Tzu’s argument. Also, the fact that our beliefs are merely verbal pronouncements that a thing is x, or not x —this too is lost, and along with it, Chuang Tzu’s argument.
In regard to the linguistic accident that to say of a thing, Shi 是 (It’s x), is the same as merely saying, Shi 是 (This)—my translation fails to translate this connotation, this aspect of Chuang Tzu’s poetry. That’s unfortunate, a loss. Still, even in my translation the parallel is clear: we see that the pronouncements, It’s x /It’s not x (shi 是/fei 非) parallel saying, This/That (shi 是/bi 彼).
References
1. Watson, B. (1968). The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. New York: Columbia University Press.
2. Lynn, R. J. (2022). Zhuangzi. A New Translation of the Sayings of Master Zhuang as Interpreted by Guo Xiang. New York: Columbia University Press.
3. Ziporyn, B. (2020). Zhuangzi. The Complete Writings. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
4. Harbsmeier, C. (1992). An Annotated Anthology of Comments on Zhuangzi 1: Xiaoyaoyou. Serica Osloensia, 1, 27-115.
5. Mair, V. H. (1994). Wandering on the Way. Early Taoist Tales and Parables of Chuang Tzu. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
6. Ziporyn, B. (2020). Zhuangzi. The Complete Writings. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Page xxxii.
7. Perkins, F. (n.d.). Editorial review of Ziporyn’s Zhuangzi: The Complete Writings, cited on the Hackett Publishing Company website.
8. Graham, A. C. (1981). Chuang-tzu: The Seven Inner Chapters and Other Writings from the Book of Chuang-tzu. Republished in 2001 under the title: Chuang-tzu: The Inner Chapters. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.