Cho-yun Hsu has worked hard and long to promote the study of Chinese history in the US, and indeed worldwide, through his work for the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation. Few people are better placed to sum up what inherited Chinese cultural values are, and the extent of his success may be readily gauged from the eminence of the scholars from very different disciplinary backgrounds who have united in praise of this translation on its dustjacket, adding as they do to a sparkling five-page foreword from one of Hsu's few peers, the late Ying-shih Yu (1930–2021). Though further commendation of the author and for the translator might seem redundant, there are aspects of this book that nevertheless call for comment. The transfer from a publication in Chinese produced in Taiwan to a work in English from Hong Kong already entailed a shift in readership, after all, that is passed over in silence within the book. True, the translator's preface does furnish a thoughtful reflection on how it differed from the other similar projects he had undertaken, which have been concerned with presenting the work of eminent intellectuals now working in the People's Republic. But this only shows that the translation was commissioned, not what role was envisioned for it.

Certainly, the clarity of Hsu's epitome of the Chinese heritage will make this a good choice for introductory college courses, especially since his outlook is not confined to high culture but extends also to the everyday. The everyday, moreover, includes plentiful reference to gods, and makes this an excellent choice for courses on Chinese religion in particular. But lest a picture of China's past as entirely god-ridden should be derived from the information provided, one chapter, the eighth, is eventually dedicated to “Secular religion,” based on the notion that Chinese people have over the course of history shifted from the “sacred” to the “mundane” (p. 199), though perhaps we should bear in mind that the nature of our sources has also changed over the course of time, so there may well be more to be said on this score. Most valuable perhaps are the author's personal comments on religious observances both in the Wuxi region where he grew up and in Taiwan, where he lived at a later stage of his life (pp. 165–167). The latter emerges as betraying patterns of religious behaviour consequent upon Taiwan's status as a new, frontier society in which colonists were moving forward at the expense of the original inhabitants, prompting the reflection that Anglophone religion also differs somewhat on the two sides of the Atlantic.

But speculation along comparative lines is one area where the lesson that may be taken from this book is that caution is advised. A rounded portrait of the Chinese tradition is well presented here, but the “Western” civilization that is put forward by contrast as needing supplementing or even replacing is inevitably much less clearly defined, though it seems to refer for the most part to the contemporary Anglophone world with which the author is most familiar. References to other civilizational traditions suggest that the author had no intention of setting himself up as a rival to Arnold Toynbee, as witness the rather brief survey provided on p. 267: “In today's world, Islamic civilisation suffers from the same flaw as Christian civilisation: dogmatism. Indian civilisation has declined and is too class-riven internally to truly achieve the equality of all beings that the Buddha insisted upon many centuries ago.” Buddhism seems to cause the author a few problems, as is hinted at by the inadvertent confusion of the Sixth and Fifth Patriarch of Chan on p. 177, possibly because as is revealed on pp. 213–214 it was the women in his hometown who engaged in Buddhist observances rather than the menfolk. Like Xi Jinping, he is keen to stress the difference between Chinese and Indian Buddhism, and from his standpoint is disposed to account for this by positing some influence from Iranian religion (p. 272) during its journey to China. However, since a large element in Chinese Buddhism was imported by sea via South-East Asia this does not look to me like a fruitful line of argument.

The standpoint of Xi Jinping is, of course, nowhere to be found in this volume, even if that figure has his own thoughts on the Chinese heritage, though to date unlike one of his notable predecessors he has rather conspicuously not contributed to it through poetry or the like. For the moment, the culture described so warmly in this book looks like it will predominantly have to exist in memory, and predominantly perhaps in expatriate memory at that. In that it shows the social engagement behind the literary legacy of both high and popular culture, the book draws very welcome attention to how the Chinese way is lived and performed, not just written down. And what this indicates is that beyond Hsu's contribution there is much, much more to be done to capture and preserve everything from rustic rituals to the creation of the finest craftsmanship in media that can do justice to that lived quality. This book could be read as merely retrospective and elegiac in nature; I hope it will also prove to be a call to further action.