A True Flower Planter: Interview with Hsing I-tien

This book is a record of interviews with Mr. Xing Yitian, a historian of the Qin and Han dynasties. Xing Yitian was born in 1947, graduated from the Department of History of National Taiwan University, and later went to the Department of History of the University of Hawaii in the United States to pursue a doctorate. His research fields include the history of the Qin and Han dynasties, the history of ancient Chinese and foreign exchanges, and Roman history. The recorder, Ma Zengrong, interviewed Mr. Xing Yitian and organized the details of his childhood, school days, and academic thinking into a book. The content includes Mr. Xing Yitian's family, school days, memories of teachers and friends, academic research, and his views on the challenges of new era academic thinking and humanities knowledge. The title of the book comes from Zhou Zuoren's words: "Some people grow flowers for leisure, some people grow flowers to make money, and true flower growers make a living by growing flowers-and flowers are never not beautiful, never not beneficial to people." Mr. Xing seeks the joy of learning for the sake of learning, not for fame and fortune, and his scholarship is only "for his own learning." The words of the ancients' "true flower growers" have made him a scholar.