ABSTRACT
In January 1922, the Commercial Press in Shanghai published the first Chinese translation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The translator was the prominent Chinese linguist, Zhao Yuanren, who had returned to China in 1920 to teach at Tsinghua University after ten years’ study and teaching in the United States. The book was a great success. Zhou Zuoren, Zhao’s eminent contemporary and often hailed as the forefather of Chinese children’s literature studies, praised the for its “unparallelled and unprecedented brillance” as a children's book (“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”140). The book’s characteristic imaginative nonsense would be “naturally appreciated” by children as “inborn poets,” as Zhou stated. Even for adults, Zhou further argued, the book is a must. Zhou lamented: “Too many adults who were once children themselves lost their child-hearts, just as caterpillars have transformed into butterflies, [the former and latter becoming] completely two different stages” (140). Because those “unfortunate” adults forget their childhood selves, according to Zhou, they are unable to understand, nourish and educate children. Zhou was worried that if these adults become parents or teachers they would impede children’s natural development. Therefore, Zhou strongly recommended the book to Chinese adults and also urged them to let their children read it.
