Liang Qichao

Peter Zarrow

China's first iconic modern intellectual. His lucid and prolific writings, touching on all major concerns in his own time and anticipating many in the future, inspired several generations of thinkers including the much younger Mao Zedong.

I have been waiting a very long time for a volume like this one, [it is] a real milestone [...] Peter Zarrow has finally undertaken the considerable scholarly effort to translate, masterfully and lucidly, key essays from Liang Qichao [...]They often succeed in capturing distinctive elements of Liang’s style, including his seeming breathlessness as he lists ever more historical examples or his full-throated urgency as he rushes to convince his readers of the crisis they are facing at any given moment [... it] should be read by all serious students of modern politics

Not being aware of Liang Qichao is like not being aware of Nietzsche or Hegel… eclectic and robustly cosmopolitan, a fascinating figure

Essays on China and the World

The power, anger and fluency of Liang Qichao's writings make him one of the towering figures in modern Chinese literature. He saw his great, almost unmanageable task as an attempt to write China into the new era - to provide an ancient country, devastated by civil war and foreign predators with the intellectual equipment to renew itself. China could only recover through a clear-sighted, informed understanding of its enemies - and by engaging in a thorough-going self-critique. Then China would be able to expel its invaders, reform its society and become a great power once more.<br/>
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Liang said that he wrote from an 'ice-drinker's studio', implying that underneath his dispassionate tone lay an ardour and passion which only ice could cool. This selection of pieces shows Liang's extraordinary range and the burning sense of mission which drove him on. Blending together Confucianism, Buddhism and the Western Enlightenment, Liang's ideas about nation, democracy and morality had a profound impact on Chinese visions of the political order, though the China that eventually emerged from the further disasters of the 1930s and 1940s would be a very different one.

Liang Qichao

Praise for Thoughts From the Ice-Drinker's Studio

China's first iconic modern intellectual. His lucid and prolific writings, touching on all major concerns in his own time and anticipating many in the future, inspired several generations of thinkers including the m ...

I have been waiting a very long time for a volume like this one, [it is] a real milestone [...] Peter Zarrow has finally undertaken the considerable scholarly effort to translate, masterfully and lucidly, key essays ...

Not being aware of Liang Qichao is like not being aware of Nietzsche or Hegel… eclectic and robustly cosmopolitan, a fascinating figure

China's first iconic modern intellectual. His lucid and prolific writings, touching on all major concerns in his own time and anticipating many in the future, inspired several generations of thinkers including the m ...

I have been waiting a very long time for a volume like this one, [it is] a real milestone [...] Peter Zarrow has finally undertaken the considerable scholarly effort to translate, masterfully and lucidly, key essays ...

Not being aware of Liang Qichao is like not being aware of Nietzsche or Hegel… eclectic and robustly cosmopolitan, a fascinating figure

China's first iconic modern intellectual. His lucid and prolific writings, touching on all major concerns in his own time and anticipating many in the future, inspired several generations of thinkers including the m ...

I have been waiting a very long time for a volume like this one, [it is] a real milestone [...] Peter Zarrow has finally undertaken the considerable scholarly effort to translate, masterfully and lucidly, key essays ...

Not being aware of Liang Qichao is like not being aware of Nietzsche or Hegel… eclectic and robustly cosmopolitan, a fascinating figure

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