Illuminating Chinese Classics

The first of the six classics (六经) that the Three Character Classic (三字经) recommends readers turn to is the Book of Changes (易经), which is actually made up of three books. It presents a method of fortune telling using something called the ‘eight trigrams’, which we explain during the episode. The parts of the book used for predicting the future are, let’s say, limited in their usefulness. But that is useful is the information it contains about China’s early history. The 三字经 was written by the Song Dynasty (宋朝) scholar Wang Yinglin (王应麟). This 1,134 character text was one of the first textbooks used by students, and provided lessons on education, morality and ethics, science, literature, and history.