None of what has been said up to this point is to suggest that studying Chinese language and early thought is only for the classically curious and linguistically intrepid. There has been an explosion of scholarly growth in classical Chinese studies over the past half-century, sufficient in both breadth and depth to allow non-specialists to read translations of Chinese philosophical texts with sensitivity and understanding. Translations of primary and secondary texts and philosophical commentaries thereon have grown apace, with a multiplicity of exegetical orientations, as have literary, historical, religious, and other studies that collectively have been shrinking the claimed mysteriousness of the East almost to the vanishing point. There are, for instance, over 150 translations in English alone of the Daodejing (Tao Te Ching), and a dozen different renditions of the Confucian Analects are in common use today in courses dealing with Chinese thought. Thus a paucity of materials can no longer be used as an excuse for not including classical Chinese philosophical texts in undergraduate courses, or indeed in the several philosophical discourses now current in professional circles. Some rudimentary knowledge of how the language works can also be of value to readers in their academic studies and/or participation in these discourses, not least by helping them in understanding and analyzing how and why both translations and interpretations of Chinese philosophical texts can and do differ from each other—at times in significant ways, thus enabling them to evaluate their readings in the subject matter for themselves. It may serve as well to see some contemporary issues in philosophy of language, or mind, or in metaphysics from a slightly different perspective, and for all these reasons this entry may also serve in a small way as a “state of the art” essay on the field.