In the history of China, Zhuangzi is undoubtedly one of the most popular excellent classics. When we open Zhuangzi, the vast northern ghost, giant Kun struggling with fins and Dapeng spreading their wings will naturally bring us into a brand-new world, while Zhuangzi's lofty personality, sincere feelings of loving nature and lofty ideal pursuit will also touch the tired hearts of the world from time to time and guide people to liberate themselves from material desires and pursue the spiritual realm of freedom and self-adaptation. Because of this, Zhuangzi has been attracting people's attention and love for thousands of years. People not only talk about Zhuangzi and comment on Zhuangzi in life, but also annotate Zhuangzi and quote Zhuangzi academically. They also admire Zhuangzi in spirit and imitate Zhuangzi in behavior, thus forming a "Zhuangzi culture" with a long history and a magnificent view in the cultural history of China.

Cheng is a great Zhuangzi scholar, and his masterpiece is Zhuangzi Book. Zhuangzi Shu was completed on the basis of absorbing the thought of Guo Xiang's Notes on Zhuangzi in Jin Dynasty. "Annotation" and "Shu" are both traditional genres in the interpretation of China's ancient classics. "Annotation" is a direct interpretation of classics, while "Shu" is a further interpretation of classics on the basis of predecessors' annotations. Compared with Guo Xiang's Zhuangzi Annotation, Cheng's Zhuangzi Shu has irreplaceable characteristics. For example, the Summary of the General Catalogue of Sikuquanshu holds that although Guo Xiang's annotation of Zhuangzi is ahead of others' expectations and unconventional, it is mostly vague and shows ideas, and there is no factual literature basis. Therefore, Cao Wei's annotation of Zhouyi has various shortcomings of the metaphysical Wang Bi.

On the other hand, Cheng's Zhuangzi Shu is "based on the meaning, clear and fluent", which is not only elegant in language, but also can smooth the incomprehensible will in Zhuangzi, and there are a lot of rare historical materials in its explanation that can broaden different opinions and broaden horizons. When we open Zhuangzi Shu by Cheng, we can find that his interpretation of Zhuangzi is really different from Guo Xiang's Notes on Zhuangzi. The explanations of some words, the narration of some chapters, the supplement of some historical facts, the introduction of some characters and the elaboration of some meanings not only make up for the shortcomings of Guo Xiang's Notes on Zhuangzi from different angles, but also have beautiful language and distant thoughts. For example, "Zhuangzi Xiaoyao Tour" "Peng's back, I don't know its thousands of miles; Anger flies away, if its wings hang in the clouds, "Cheng Shuyun:

Although the fish is big, it is difficult to know by the head and tail; When a bird talks about its back, it also shows that it is not well conceived. Therefore, the following cloud does not know its practitioners. With angry wings, a fast sweater should not only beat the wind, but also the water. So, I cut off the clouds, carrying the blue sky, soaring, hanging shadows, if the clouds on the horizon fall.

Cheng's explanation not only reveals the main meanings of Kun's "Da" and Peng's "Hui", but also runs through the following paragraphs, highlighting the mutual care of the text; In the explanation of Dapeng's Angry Flying, parallelism and antithesis were used, and the magnificent image of Dapeng suddenly jumped to the page. Another example is the last paragraph of Zhuangzi's Theory of Everything: Zhou Meng, Qianzhuang, and Hu Die are lifelike, which is a metaphor for his ambition! I don't know, Zhou Ye. If you suddenly feel it, you will suddenly feel it. I wonder if Zhou's dream is a dream or a dream is Zhou He? Zhou he, there are still points. This is called materialization.

This passage has always been concerned by everyone in Zhuang studies, from which allusions such as "Zhuang Zhou dreamed of butterflies" and "Saint Zhuangzi daydreaming was bewitched by butterflies" came. But the moral of this paragraph, but also difficult to understand, cheng explained:

The husband is born and dies, the cold and summer are moved, the heavens and the earth are covered, and everything is reasonable. Zhuang lit candles in the mirror and spread goodness to travel, so he could dream of life and death and send it from him to materialization. Taking dreams as Hu Die is vivid and comfortable; I feel that I am Zhuang Zhou, and my ambition is stubborn and smooth.

These words constitute a short essay, which is not only antithetical and elegant, but also reveals the basic truth that everything in the world changes, clarifies the moral of Zhuangzi and becomes a butterfly. It is an ideological prose with beautiful and simple language and rich ideological meaning. These can be found in Cheng's Zhuangzi Book. In addition, Cheng also gave a detailed explanation of the celebrities, allusions, systems and figures involved in Zhuangzi. In a sense, this book can be regarded as a small encyclopedia of Zhuang Xueyan. If we can compare it with Zhuangzi and Guo Xiang's Notes on Zhuangzi, we will learn a lot from it!

Cheng's Zhuangzi Shu is elegant, inspiring, profound in meaning, rich in connotation and broad in vision, with nearly 300,000 words, which tells us the mystery and wisdom contained in Zhuangzi with more than 60,000 words. Compared with Guo Xiang's Notes on Zhuangzi, this book is more faithful to the original text of Zhuangzi and closer to the thought of Zhuangzi. Therefore, when studying Zhuangzi in later generations, Cheng's Zhuangzi Shu is regarded as an indispensable and important document, especially after entering the Song and Yuan Dynasties, and the previous explanations of Zhuangzi are almost scattered, only Guo Xiang's Zhuangzi. Zhu Guo and Chengshu have become irreplaceable classic annotation texts in Zhuang academic circles, and they are the most beautiful "Gemini" in Zhuang history.