"中華民族"作為近代產生的概念,不僅是當今學界持續聚焦熱議的話題,同時也是中國在建立現代國家的具體實踐中最為倚重的政治觀念。圍繞最近出版的《重塑中華》一書中提出的若干論題,分別討論作為"中華民族"觀研究背景的神話起源與英雄譜系的爭論史,"中華民族"觀產生的時代背景及其內涵演變,可以進一步思考,以往概念史研究把注意力過多放在西式思想資源的轉譯及其影響方面,而相對忽視了傳統思想資源在現代概念形成和轉換當中所起的重要作用。應避免僅僅從概念到概念封閉式地處理詞語變遷史,更加有效地尋求近現代概念與傳統資源的銜接繼承關系。

"The Chinese Nation(Zhonghua minzu)"as a modern concept is not only a topic discussed warmly by the current academia but also a political idea that China has been relying on to build a modern nation-state in practice.Inspired by the several issues brought up by the newly published Reconstructing China written by Huang Xingtao,this article discusses the history of the debates on the mythological origins and heroic genealogy of the Chinese nation and the historical background of the birth of the"Chinese Nation"concept and its changing meanings.Furthermore,this article points out that the previous research on the history of concepts puts too much attention to the translation of Western ideas and their influences and relatively overlooks the important role that the traditional intellectual sources played in the formation and transformation of modern concepts.The author suggests avoiding writing the history of terms in a closed circuit from one concept to another,but rather tracing continuities between modern concepts and traditional resources more effectively.