Talk:Zhuangzi (book)/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Zanhe (talk · contribs) 00:54, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

My first impression is that that article is quite close to meeting GA criteria, but I'll study the article and sources and give a more detailed review in the next few days. -Zanhe (talk) 00:58, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Lead

Per Chinese MoS, hanzi should be removed from the lead as it is already in infoboxes. On the other hand, the WG romanization Chuang Tzu is quite often seen in English literature and should be included in the lead.

"Virtually every major Chinese writer and poet in history ... were familiar with and deeply influenced by the Zhuangzi." This is a bit over the top and should be toned down or at least attributed to Mair. (also in the "Influence" section)

Done. White Whirlwind 咨 03:14, 13 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Content

The sentence - "In this anecdote, Zhuangzi humorously and absurdly uses "Wonton", a name for both primordial chaos and, by physical analogy, wonton soup, to demonstrate what he believed were the disastrous consequences of going against things' innate natures." - is uncited and looks dubious. "Wonton" seems to be the idiosyncratic translation used by Mair. The original Chinese word 渾沌 hundun is different from wonton the food, and it's doubtful that wonton soup had been invented in the Zhou dynasty.

Although Mair does tend toward idiosyncrasy, he generally does so with good reasons: in this case, the Chinese word hundun 渾沌 probably is the same as the food and was extant in the late Warring States period, contrary to what you wrote. The connections between hundun Chaos and "wonton" food have been noted since at least Wolfram Eberhard. Mair (1994:386) has a note on the subject, which is also treated in Anderson's The Food of China, which Mair cites. White Whirlwind 咨 03:25, 13 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

References

Some sources cited are available on Google books, including Mair 1994, the main source for the article. It would be helpful to add the URLs in to the citation templates, to make it easier for people who'd like to check out the sources and read more.

I've never put Google Books links onto WP sources before, so I wasn't entirely sure what the formatting practice was. Take a look at the two I found and if there's anything wrong with them I'd appreciate anyone fixing them for me. White Whirlwind 咨 03:32, 13 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Breadth

The article covers most main points quite well. One major omission I can see is the analysis of the philosophy of the outer and miscellaneous chapters, especially the Yangist chapters (cf. the Zhuangzi entry on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). According to David Nivison in the Cambridge History of Ancient China (p. 786), Yang Zhu or one of his disciples may have been the unnamed "master" quoted in Zhuangzi, and Yangism may have evolved into Zhuangzi's Daoism, so this seems particularly important. The Primitivist and Syncretist chapters also deserve at least a brief summary.

The article mentions commentaries by Guo Xiang and Cheng Xuanying. I think other important classical commentaries are also worth a mention, perhaps in a list format similar to the "notable translations" list. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy lists a few, and ctext.org has more.

Those are good points, and I additionally was planning to add another area that is not currently in the article, namely the Zhuangzi's huge influence on Zen Buddhism, particularly in Japan. However, I was hoping to leave these for if/when the article gets ready for FA nomination. I'd rather not have to add ALL this material at the moment, if possible. White Whirlwind 咨 03:41, 13 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Overall this is a very well written article and I enjoyed reading and reviewing it. I'll put it on hold while waiting for your improvement. -Zanhe (talk) 09:49, 7 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Query

What is the status of this review? I see a couple of minor edits from the nominator on March 8, but nothing in the four weeks since then. If the improvements requested aren't going to be done, then the nomination should probably be closed as unsuccessful, given the issues raised. BlueMoonset (talk) 17:49, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I posted a message on the nominator's talk page. Despite the issues raised, it's a high quality article and I really hope it will pass. -Zanhe (talk) 23:19, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The only issue that seems to be untouched is the breadth note, which he chose to hold off on. Aside from that the issues appear to be fixed now (i handled any that he said he did but didn't), so the article passes. Wizardman 13:33, 26 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]