Historical Records, written by Sima Qian in the Western Han Dynasty, is basically heard by everyone. It records the history of more than 3,000 years from the period of the Yellow Emperor to the first year of Emperor Wudi's Yuan Shou, and adopts biographical style. The book contains 12 biographies, 30 families, 70 biographies, 10 tables and 8 books, with a total of 130 articles. This book is one of the most famous ancient books in the history of China, and this title is not empty. This general history is very valuable for studying the history of China. In addition to rigor, Sima Qian also added his own subjective feelings, making this book interesting to read, with a strong tragic style, a strong legend and a magnificent momentum, which is no less than the novel. The reason why Sima Qian added his own emotional color can be seen from his language of depicting historical figures. For example, Xiang Yu's most wonderful chronicle, Xiang Yu is not an emperor, but Sima Qian put Xiang Yu in the Twelve Chronicles, including the description of Xiang Yu's deeds, which made him feel like farewell my concubine and finally the tragic Wujiang River committed suicide. In his words and sentences, people feel Sima Qian's appreciation of Xiang Yu. I strongly recommend that you read Historical Records. Classical Chinese is not difficult to read. The story is interesting and the characters are full.
Han Shu written by Ban Gu in the Eastern Han Dynasty is biographical, just like Historical Records, but Han Shu is a dynastic history. The recorded events began in the first year of Emperor Gaozu Liu Bang and ended in the fourth year of Wang Mang. Twelve biographies, eight tables, ten records and seventy biographies, a total of 100 articles. In fact, this book can be compared with Historical Records. This book is simple and elegant, which is obviously comparable to historical records. The ancient Chinese characters commonly used in Hanshu are mostly parallel prose, which is not as easy to read as Shiji. However, at that time, the mainstream of literature in Han dynasty had changed from vulgarity to elegance, and parallel prose was sought after, so the evaluation of Hanshu at that time was even higher than that of Shiji, and it was worth reading anyway.
There are many books about the history of China. If you want to have a comprehensive understanding, I suggest reading all the twenty-four histories, and all the ones listed above are among the twenty-four histories. Of course, this is when you have time. If you just want to have a general understanding, after reading Historical Records, just find more books about the history after the Han Dynasty, and then focus on the history you are interested in.
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