Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, State Prize Winner (1990), Chief Researcher of the Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences Boris Lvovich Riftin turned 70 years old. Riftin is a well-known expert on Chinese folklore and literature in China. He is the author of the first monograph on Chinese folklore in our country ("Tales of the Great Wall and the problem of genre in Chinese folklore", Moscow, 1961), which immediately aroused the interest of scientists from different countries, as evidenced by reviews that appeared not only in Russia, but also in China, Czechoslovakia, Italy and other countries. Started in the 1950s, the research direction of Chinese folk culture has become the main one in the scientific biography of the scientist. His second monumental work, " The Historical Epic and Folklore Tradition in China "(Moscow, 1970), was published in Shanghai in 1997 in Chinese translation and, despite almost 30 years that have passed since the appearance of the Russian edition, immediately attracted the attention of researchers of the Chinese novel and folk culture. It was distinguished not only by the abundance of material collected, but also by a fundamentally new research method (for example, the structure of a Chinese prose tale, the question of epic motifs in Chinese legends, novels and dramas, etc.). For the first time in science, B. L. Riftin raised the question of the evolution of portraiture of characters. His book " From Myth to Novel. The evolution of character Portrayals in Chinese literature "(Moscow, 1979), which also attracted responses abroad. In general, the study of Chinese mythology since the 1960s has become one of the main areas of work of the scientist. Under his editorship and with his additions, a Russian translation of Yuan Ke's book "Myths of Ancient China" (1965, expanded edition 1987, and a new expanded edition is being prepared) was published, and he also owns more than a hundred articles in " ... Read more