Classic of the Mountains and Seas, as known as Shan Hai Jing, currently ranks top of a Chinese-book seller, mark the popularity of Chinese Literature in US.
Reported by Arise Shine, a Chinese-book Amazon Seller, that Shan Hai Jiing, Classic of Mountains and Seas, turns to the best among its over 10k books. The best sold edition is Illustrated Book of Shanhaijing/Shan Hai Ching/ Classic of the Mountains and Seas (in Chinese).
Shan Hai Jing(山海经), written by Zhang Yue, formerly romanized the Shan-hai Ching, is a Chinese classic text and a compilation of mythic geography and myth. Versions of the text have existed since the 4th century BC, but the present form was not reached until the early Han dynasty a few centuries later. It is largely a fabulous geographical and cultural account of per-Qin China as well as a collection of Chinese mythology.
The said book is divided into eighteen sections; it describes over 550 mountains and 300 channels. The exact author(s) of the book and the time it was written are still undetermined. It was originally thought that mythical figures such as Yu the Great or Boyi wrote the book. However, the consensus among modern Sinologists is that the book was not written at a single time by a single author, but rather by numerous people from the period of the Warring States to the beginning of the Han dynasty.
The ancient Chinese treated the Classic as a record of geography. The Classic was classified under the category of geography in both Book of Sui and Comprehensive Examination of Literature of Duanlin Ma. It was also an important reference material of Chinese historians through the long history of China.
