This comprehensive introduction to Chinese aesthetics and literature includes the major modern genres of poetry, fiction, and drama. Featuring the work of renowned scholars in Chinese studies, the book provides an historical survey of Chinese literature and explains its philosophical and historical underpinnings in Daoist, Buddhist, and Confucian thought. The traditions of lyric poetry, fiction, and theater are presented as cultural practices. Modern responses to the political and social crises of twentieth-century China and on the avant-garde experimental literature of twenty-first century China are also examined.