The Emergence of Technical Communication in China—Yi Jing (I Ching)

To promote intercultural understanding in technical communication, this article studies Yi Jing as a technical instructions manual, the first technical communication book in China. After examining the information in Yi Jing and its organization as well as a modern Chinese instructional manual, the author claims that Yi Jing developed the theory that context and individual objects should be seen as a unity and thus established a tradition that Chinese instructional manuals observe: focusing on contextual information instead of action-oriented instructions for task performance. The author compares the Chinese manual and an American one to support his claim that Yi Jing's philosophy helps us uncover a pattern of meaning in modern Chinese instructional manuals.