Book prize jury focuses on traditional culture when picking winners

The revival of traditional Chinese culture is the focus of the latest Wenjin Book Award, one of China's top book prizes.

The awards, which are in their 13th edition this year, were bestowed in the National Library of China on World Book Day, which fell on Monday.

Nine winners were selected from 1,874 books－usually non-literature－published in 2017 nationwide, and the works were jointly appraised by 81 libraries and a 14-member panel.

One winner was The One Hundred Classics of Traditional Chinese Culture (Volume 1 to 10), which includes Analects, an ancient Confucian classic; a Classic of Poetry, a collection of poems from the 11th to the 7th century BC, and I Ching, a Chinese divination book; the oldest surviving Chinese classic from the Western Zhou Dynasty (c.11th century to 771 BC), as well as commentaries by modern experts.

"The book uses recent academic work to explain traditional culture to the public," says Han Yongjin, the director of the NLC.

"The annotations reflect old traditions, but they also show new views, which is a highlight of this series," he says.

Thirty Great Inventions in China, another winner, uses a new angle to review the history of Chinese scientific technology, breaking the stereotype of the "Big Four Inventions", which refer to papermaking, gunpowder, the compass, and printing, which were all created in China.

"The Big Four were talked about for too long because they greatly helped the development of Western civilization as well," says Feng Lisheng, the author of the book.

"However, they cannot reflect the panorama of Chinese technological history.