Where can I look for foreign-published books for learning Chinese?

[teachinator]

Specifically, I want to buy the book "Reading and Writing Chinese" (simplified character version) by William McNaughton. I have the traditional character version of this book and fervently wish I'd bought the simpified character version before coming to China, but I didn't, so now I have to either find it here in Beijing or mail-order it from Amazon, with maybe a month lag time before it arrives. I love this book for its step-by-step instruction on properly writing Chinese characters. I find I can't learn (or review) how to write characters properly from the printed versions in my textbooks, and using the flashcards I bought is proving to be really tedious.

So does anyone know of any bookstore in Beijing (best if in Haidian district) that is likely to carry foreign-published books on learning Chinese? If not, could someone recommend a good book I can get locally that can help me properly write attractive characters? Thanks for any help.

[onebir]

there's a book of flashcards (printed on light card - perforated so you can pull them out) at the foreign language bookstore in wangfujing. (there's another thread on flashcards on this site with more details)

i'm pretty sure the wangfujing bookstore has the simplified edn of the mcnaughton book too...

[badr]

to write esthetically pleasing characters, I would recommend those small notebook style calligraphy books that you can find in most chinese bookstores. They usually have a a pages of printed text or random characters covered by another empty transparent page so that you can practice writing over the printed ones.

they're really cool and useful, especially the ones that include pinyin

[Shadowdh]

You could try either the foreign language book store on Wangfujing or the Wangfujing book store itself... both are excellent and I bought many, many books there (much to the dismay of the wife... oh well)... but sorry they obviously arent in Haidian... but they are just a short train ride (underground) away...

[yonitabonita]

I'm not sure if you're still looking for this book but I saw it for sale on the weekend at 大山子. I even grabbed a card for you at the bookstore, but realised when I got home that the card I grabbed was for a gallery- not the bookstore.

The bookstore is located in the same complex as 798 Gallery. The photo gallery is at one end of the corridor, and the bookstore is at the opposite end, about 15 metres down. You'll know the bookstore because it joins onto a cafe.

It's being sold for 221 yuan. Hope this helps.

Yonita

[teachinator]

Yonitabonita et al,

Thank you for the recommendations and research about buying "Reading and Writing Chinese." I didn't end up getting it in China; my husband came to visit me and I had him buy it in the U.S. and bring it to me.

For any beginning to low intermediate student of Chinese who might read this thread and be interested in a book to help you learn to write characters, I do highly recommend this book, and I recommend buying it in your own country, which will probably be easier than tracking it down in China! My copy cost, in the U.S., just about exactly what Yonitabonita said it cost in the bookstore here in Beijing (about the equivalent of 220 yuan).

As you get more adept at the characters the book becomes somewhat less useful, because the exact stroke order is only shown for the first 1067 characters; then for the remaining 2000 or so they simply provide a nice large, clear picture of a well-done hand-drawn character. This is still somewhat useful because you can use their examples as a model for writing characters yourself, which you can't always do if you only have the printed version in the textbook to go from.

This book comes in both simplified and traditional character versions, so if you buy it, make sure to buy the version that's relevant for you.