Most Chinese know that the most detailed account of China's history is the Twenty-Four Histories.
There is a historian who has not only read the twenty-four histories, but also read through them several times, and he is Mr. Lu Simian, who is one of the "four great historians of modern China" along with Qian Mu, Chen Yuan, and Chen Yinke.
In his later years, Lü Simian engaged in the study of the history of the Broken Dynasty, and successively published works such as "History of the Pre-Qin Dynasty", "History of the Qin and Han Dynasties", "History of the Southern and Northern Dynasties of Wei and Jin", "History of the Five Dynasties of Sui and Tang Dynasties", and also wrote "History of Chinese Nationalities" and "History of Chinese Institutions".
He was the first scholar to study the history of China more than three times in more than a hundred years, the first scholar to write about the general history of China in the vernacular, and the only scholar who wrote the general history of China in two styles, and was praised as the scholar who "opened a new era of historical writings". Lü Simian's research involves a wide range of fields, and there are special academic works in China's general history, broken dynasty history, social history, cultural history, ethnic history, political system history, intellectual history, academic history, historiography, historical research method, and historical reading method.
It is generally believed that the culmination of Chinese history is Qian Mu's Outline of National History.
Mr. Lü Simian's "General History of China", formerly known as "Lü Shu General History of China", completed in 1939, was a textbook written by Mr. Lü Simian to meet the needs of university teaching at that time when Shanghai became an "isolated island" during the War of Resistance Against Japan, and it is also Mr. Lü's representative work, which is clearly organized and insightful, and has become a classic reading material for readers to understand Chinese history.
The eighteen chapters of the first volume focus on cultural phenomena and explain various aspects such as ancient marriage, official system, food, clothing, housing, and transportation; the thirty-six chapters in the second volume describe the changes in Chinese politics, the historical events of the dynasties and dynasties until the founding of the Republic of China. Since its publication, "General History of China" has been sold well for more than 70 years, reprinted hundreds of times, with rich historical facts and smooth tone, condensing China's 5,000 years of history, can be described as the first choice for reading China's general history, to help readers initially grasp all aspects of Chinese history, especially the socio-economic, political system and academic culture and other systematic historical knowledge has great benefits.
Lü Simian's study of history pays attention to comparing historical materials, classifying notes, is good at comprehensive research and integration, unremittingly dabbles in ancient documents, and extensively reads new newspapers and periodicals and new cultures, new ideas and research methods imported from the West. Lü Simian's "General History of China" takes the history of the past dynasties as the basic material, takes the traditional notation method as the basic means, and excavates the historical facts that were once obscured through the meticulous comparison and thorough organization of the historical materials, so as to obtain new knowledge that has never been seen before.