"Up and Down Five Thousand Years" was originally an unfinished manuscript written by the late Professor Lin Handa.During his lifetime, Mr. Lin planned to write a set of stories covering the entire ancient historical period.Due to his premature death, he only wrote the part before the Eastern Han Dynasty, and failed to realize his writing plan.The editor comrade of Juvenile and Children's Publishing House gave me his posthumous manuscript, and asked me to sort out and rewrite some articles, and to complete the part that Mr. Lin had not written (from the Three Kingdoms to before the Opium War in the Qing Dynasty).

Professor Lin Handa is an educator and linguist.He has done a lot of work in writing historical stories.He regards writing historical stories as "an attempt at a new language and a reorganization of old stories."Many historical story books written by him have their own unique style and have long been popular.It is quite difficult to continue writing his manuscript.But after much consideration, I still accepted the task. The main reason why I accepted this task is that I have always had the desire to write a book introducing Chinese history for young readers.I think that to be a Chinese, one should know a little bit of Chinese history.Our motherland is a great country.The Chinese nation is a nation with a long and splendid culture.Only by understanding the past of the motherland can we love the present and future of the motherland more.In the long history of our country, many meaningful events have occurred and many outstanding figures have emerged. Introducing these historical events and figures to young readers can broaden their horizons, inspire their wisdom, and cultivate their national self-esteem and patriotic fervor.Although the times are different, many stories in history, from different angles, have certain educational and reference functions for us.

I used to work in primary and secondary education. In my work practice, I realized that in order to improve students' cultural literacy, in addition to strengthening reading and writing teaching, expanding students' knowledge is also one of the indispensable conditions.Especially historical knowledge is very closely related to Chinese knowledge.There are many words in modern Chinese, especially idioms and allusions, most of which come from various historical books.In some classic works of ancient and modern times, it is not uncommon to use historical facts.Therefore, it is undoubtedly beneficial for students to read some history from an early age to improve their cultural literacy and cultivate their good sentiments.

There are too many historical books in our country, and the original works of ancient history are all written in classical Chinese.It is of course very difficult for ordinary young readers to read these books, not to mention that students now have so many subjects to learn, and it is rarely possible to get in touch with the original works.In order to solve this problem, I think it is very meaningful to use the rich materials in historical books to organize a set of simple and systematic historical readings. "Up and Down Five Thousand Years" is a set of story-based historical readings.In this set of books, the author selects important and famous characters and events, organizes and tailors them according to historical materials, and writes them in popular modern language, without narration and description, and basically without fiction.In this way, in terms of the vividness of the plot, it has to be limited by historical materials; and for readers to understand history, the materials provided are relatively reliable and well-founded.

Telling history in the form of a story has its limitations.Through stories, readers can only understand fragments of a certain historical event or a certain character's activities; It is unlikely to be discussed in detail in the form of a story.Therefore, "Up and Down Five Thousand Years" can be used as an auxiliary reading for learning history, and cannot replace history textbooks. Writing historical readings must involve some issues of viewpoint.In this regard, we still need to maintain Mr. Lin's approach, that is, the author tries not to make comments and make less analysis; some problems are left to the readers to analyze, think, and criticize.Of course, the author has actually expressed his own attitude in the selection of materials and tone of praise and criticism.I think there are two more points that need to be explained: first, when using original historical materials, the author tries to select and tailor them with the perspective of historical materialism.But it is not necessary to modify historical materials from a modern point of view.The activities and language of the characters in the story are basically written according to the original history.Second, the evaluation of historical events and historical figures cannot be separated from specific historical conditions, nor can it be easily affirmed or completely negated.You can't just talk about good people, and everything is good; once you mention bad people, you will be bad to the end.Each historical story in this book only reflects one aspect or fragment of an event or person, and it cannot be used to make a comprehensive evaluation of a certain event or person.

"Up and Down Five Thousand Years" is written in historical order, covering the time from ancient times to before the Opium War of the Qing Dynasty. Completed in January 1981
Revised in 1984
Reread in 1991