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David Wang's long-awaited study redefines the parameters of modern Chinese literature. Focusing on the epic mid-century transitions, Wang's monumental ouevre situates twentieth-century Chinese literature in deep historical time by excavating the "lyrical tradition" of Chinese writing. Faced with historical changes on a monumental scale, Chinese writers and artists sustained their creative impetus by drawing on and reinventing the lyrical foundations that had supported Chinese literature through the ages. Synthesizing a vast amount of scholarship in both English and Chinese, and all the while re-reading canonical texts and drawing attention to hitherto overlooked figures, Wang's book proposes a scholarly agenda that will occupy the field for many years. I look to The Lyrical in Epic Time as a model of scholarship, and I have drawn inspiration from it for my own work, in which I juxtapose Wang's "lyrical tradition" with the "cosmopolitan tradition" of modern Chinese literature. Working on a similar period, but from a very different methodological and conceptual angle, I find many productive points of conversation with Wang's line of thought. I consider myself fortunate to have witnessed the slow genesis of The Lyrical in Epic Time; not being a student of Wang's myself, I have nonetheless—like nearly anyone in the field today—benefited from the intellectual generosity of Prof. Wang.