This website includes all Chinese texts and key phrases from the book, The Self in the West and East Asia, with both English translations and then the original text in traditional Chinese characters of both my own translation and works originally published in traditional characters. However, if original texts are published in simplified characters, they are kept. In addition, all related weblinks are also listed here. The entries are organized by chapter in the order in which original Chinese texts or phrases appear. Each entry is under its endnote number, followed by the reference title, chapter number, and section number, the text/phrase, and the weblink when appropriate. Translations of original Chinese texts may contain minor emendations.
Dr. Jin Li is Professor of Education and Human Development at Brown University. Originally from China, she received her B.A. in German from Guangzhou Institute of Foreign Languages in 1982. She earned her first Ed.M. in education from the University of Pittsburgh in 1988, her second Ed.M. in Administrative Planning and Social Policy in 1991 and her Ed.D. in human development and psychology in 1997 from Harvard University. Dr. Li’s research focuses on East Asian virtue-oriented and Western mind-oriented learning models and how these models shape children’s learning beliefs, parental socialization, and achievement. She has studied children and families in China and Taiwan as well as those from Chinese American, European American, and other cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Her research has been funded by William T. Grant Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Foundation for Child Development, and the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation. The age groups range from early childhood, middle-childhood, and adolescence to college students. Her research has been published in leading academic journals and presses. She has delivered lectures in a dozen different countries. Her 2012 book Cultural Foundations of Learning: East and West synthesizes related research over the past decades and offers new perspectives on the indispensable role of culture in human learning. Dr. Li was an inaugural Fellow of Berggruen Institute, 2015-17, first at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University and later at Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University, China. The Berggruen Fellowship supported her book project entitled The Self in the West and East Asia: Being or Becoming, published in 2024. In this treatise, Dr. Li synthesizes philosophy with psychological research to examine how the self is conceptualized and functions in these two cultural systems.