Confucius studied in thousands of books and traveled on Wan Li Road all his life, and collected, studied, sorted out and edited six ancient documents: Yi, Shu, Shi, Li, Yue and Chunqiu. The purpose of Confucius' doing this is: firstly, to find the source of constructing Confucianism from the cultural remains 2500 years before his birth; The second is to use this as a teaching material to educate his 3000 students. Therefore, Confucius became the first person to collect ancient cultural achievements.

In 22 1 year BC, the state of Qin strengthened by Legalists unified the world and established the Qin Dynasty. Then Qin Shihuang "burned books to bury Confucianism", and then Xiang Yu set fire to Epang Palace. All the six books deleted by Confucius were destroyed except Yi.

Overthrow the rulers of the Qin and Han dynasties and carry out the general plan of "ousting hundreds of schools and respecting Confucianism alone" Five books, Yi, Shu, Shi, Li and Chunqiu, which have been preserved by the people, have been recognized as "classics" in law, and a "doctor of the Five Classics" has been set up to study and teach these five Confucian classics. The Five Classics came into being and became the mainstream culture of China society in the next two thousand years of regime change. It is from this historical fact that we can roughly judge that Yue, one of the six classics compiled by Confucius, was lost before Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty.

Different from the formation and determination of the Five Classics as the highest Confucian classics, the formation and determination of the Four Books took 1000 years.

The first is The Analects of Confucius. Confucius didn't see the book that should have belonged to him before his death. Decades after the death of Confucius, The Analects of Confucius, a masterpiece compiled by his disciples and re-disciples based on Confucius' remarks, came out and was widely circulated. After the Qin Dynasty burned books to bury Confucianism, only three books, The Ancient Analects, The Analects of Qi and The Analects of Lu, spread to the Han Dynasty. The Analects we see today is the integration of the above three Analects by Confucianism in the Han Dynasty.

The book Mencius was highly praised and began in the Han Dynasty. When Emperor Xiaowen of Han Dynasty called The Analects of Confucius, The Book of Filial Piety and Mencius "Little Three Classics". However, The Analects of Confucius and Mencius officially entered the "Four Books" and became the highest classics of Confucianism, after Zhu, a philosopher in the Southern Song Dynasty, wrote the Notes to the Four Books.

"University" and "The Doctrine of the Mean" are two articles rather than two books. Because the university is Article 42 of the Book of Rites and The Doctrine of the Mean is Article 31 of the Book of Rites. Because Qin Shihuang burned books and the Qin and Han wars, Confucian classics were almost lost. The Book of Rites we see today was re-collected, sorted and edited by Dai Sheng, a ritualist in the mid-Western Han Dynasty (known as The Book of Rites of Little Dai in history), which included Daxue and The Doctrine of the Mean. However, for a long time, people didn't realize that Daxue is a Confucian classic of political philosophy and The Doctrine of the Mean is a Confucian classic of life philosophy.

Zhu, a Neo-Confucianist in the Southern Song Dynasty, is one of the most important thinkers in the history of Confucianism, and he is the master of the highest Confucian classic "Four Books". Because of his extensive knowledge and rigorous scholarship, he was elected to the palace as the teacher of the prince in his early years. In order to teach the prince well, he revised his research on the Great Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean, The Analects of Confucius and Mencius into four books as teaching materials. Later, Zhu constantly revised and revised these four books. It was not until he was 60 years old that these four books, which had exhausted his life's hard work, were synthesized and published at the same time, and were called "four sons". Later, people called it "four books and chapters", and later they simply called it "four books". This is the formation process of the "Four Books".

The formation of the "Four Books" is an important event in the history of China's traditional academic thought after the establishment of the "Five Classics" in the Han Dynasty, which has influenced the later China society for nearly a thousand years. Song Lizong wrote to praise the notes on four books; Notes on the Imperial Examination in Yuan Dynasty and the Four Books on the Examination of Scholars in the World. Emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty issued a letter, which made the four books and five classics stand side by side in the world. Since then, the title of "Four Books and Five Classics" has been widely circulated in China.

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He has served as editor of China Youth Publishing House, editor, vice president and deputy editor of Writers Publishing House, executive deputy curator of China Modern Literature Museum, and member of the 6th and 7th National Committee of Chinese Writers Association.