The Complexities of Inheritance: Introduction

T he six essays in this special issue focus on China’s use of antiquity, both its own and that of the West. They treat the various interpretations and appropriations of the “classics,” East and West, in China from the end of the Cultural Revolution (1976) to the present day. Of course, they cannot be representative of the topic in any comprehensive way, but all of them engage with appropriations of antiquity that are in some way relevant to China’s present. And in that focus, they represent a still nascent field. Other ways of engaging with antiquity have been more common; recent studies have focused on the reception of classical literature by Chinese literary authors of the twentieth century; comparative ancient philosophy; comparative ancient medicine and other cultural comparisons related to Greco-Roman and Chinese antiquity; and comparative history, whether of ancient empires or of China’s rise to power without an industrial revolution. While these studies show the growing interest in China as a sort of mirror to the West, or as a culture that is “good to think with,” they are largely scholarly and