Books/Short Stories at the 1,000 - 1,500 character level

[crjcrj]

I love the HanYu Feng / Chinese Breeze books, but I have read all the 300 ones a few times, the 500 ones a few times (except for the two new ones, which I just got today - yeah!)

BUT, my reading level is now somewhere around 1,000 - 1,500 characters. (1,000 easy, 1,500 I struggle)

Are there ANY other readers of the style of HanYu Feng?? My teacher called the publishers they said the 750 series aren't coming out until next year. Who knows when the higher levels will be out...

(the cool thing is, when I read the first 300 book last year, I remember how HARD it was - nice to see I have made some progress, no matter how slowly)

An hour at Wang Fu Jing Bookstore just got me pointed from the learning Chinese section to the Chinese kids books and back and forth.

I have a very hard time believing there are no good readers out there in Chinese. The key is they must use HANZI, not pinyin/English.

Short stories, simple news articles in a book, longer stories, whatever... just something besides a text book. I used these books as my bedtime reading, and I totally credit them for keeping my reading up and increasing my reading speed.

I'm okay ordering on Amazon from another country.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

[Mouseneb]

Here's a free option: http://www.slow-chinese.com

They post articles and podcasts for Chinese learners. I'm around 1,000 characters and I struggle but get through them with a good online dictionary. Might be a good level for you.

[crjcrj]

Thanks!

I actually just put those on my ipod after reading about them on Chinese Forums (which is also where I first learned about HanYu Feng!). I haven't read them yet, but enjoyed the few I listened to. Maybe I should read them instead, hadn't thought of that, thanks for the idea!

The thing is, I really like to read a BOOK before going to sleep, and this is about the only study time I get outside of class (I study in class 4 hours every morning, but play with my two toddlers every afternoon, so am shattered by evening).

Thanks again for the great suggestion, maybe others have some ideas that we can both use

[character]

Have you looked at Yale Press' offerings?

600 characters

http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780887102080 (I have this in Traditional and think it's pretty good, but expensive)

1000 characters

http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780887101472

1300 characters

http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780887101588

"This book completes the Written Standard Chinese series. It resumes from the end of Book Three and is designed to bring the student to the 1300 character recognition level, in both traditional and simplified forms. After Book Four, the student will be prepared to start reading Chinese newspapers, periodicals, or literature."

They have a lot of other books which might be of interest, or perhaps as the above description says, you should look at learning to read non-instructional material, such as Gu Long wuxia novels.

[taijidan]

Graded Chinese Reader

There are 3 books in this series

These are 3000 words (HSK A & B) they have pinyin above the hanzi, which I really don't like, but they are still useful.

http://www.amazon.cn/mn/detailApp/ref=sr_1_2?_encoding=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253464917&asin=B0012UMXIE&sr=8-2

http://www.amazon.cn/mn/detailApp/ref=sr_1_1?_encoding=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253464917&asin=B0011C5SDK&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.cn/mn/detailApp/ref=sr_1_3?_encoding=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253464917&asin=B002GF1FXS&sr=8-3

Read it now

There are also 4 books in this series, which are good.

They have hanzi on the left page and pinyin on the right.

http://www.amazon.cn/mn/detailApp/ref=sr_1_4?_encoding=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253464917&asin=B001OCETIW&sr=8-4

http://www.amazon.cn/mn/detailApp/ref=sr_1_5?_encoding=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253464917&asin=B002DN9YTU&sr=8-5

http://www.amazon.cn/mn/detailApp/ref=sr_1_6?_encoding=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253464917&asin=B001RNNKDI&sr=8-6

http://www.amazon.cn/mn/detailApp/ref=sr_1_7?_encoding=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253464917&asin=B0029XJ1M4&sr=8-7

Wit and Humour: easy chinese reading series

Then there are a couple of books in this series.

(unfortunately also with pinyin above the hanzi)

http://www.amazon.cn/mn/detailApp/ref=sr_1_1?_encoding=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253465392&asin=B0011AOHMK&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.cn/mn/detailApp/ref=sr_1_1?_encoding=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253465501&asin=B00116CIF2&sr=1-1

XiYangyang

These comics are also quite easy to read

http://www.amazon.cn/mn/detailApp/ref=sr_1_2?_encoding=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253465585&asin=B0019R0GAM&sr=1-2

[taijidan]

Also these 2 series:

http://www.amazon.com/Tales-Traditions-Readings-Chinese-Literature/dp/0887275346/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_c

http://www.amazon.com/How-Far-Away-other-Essays/dp/0887275354/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

[character]

chinasprout.com has a lot of bilingual books of various levels.

[crjcrj]

Thank you so much.

http://www.cheng-tsui.com/ does seem to have some interesting new books out, I wonder if I can find them here or have to order them (I wrote to them to ask).

The Read it Now series looks great (I can ignore pinyin if on opposite page, I can't ignore it if it is above the characters!)

http://www.amazon.cn/mn/detailApp/re...1OCETIW&sr=8-4

http://www.amazon.cn/mn/detailApp/re...2DN9YTU&sr=8-5

http://www.amazon.cn/mn/detailApp/re...1RNNKDI&sr=8-6

http://www.amazon.cn/mn/detailApp/re...29XJ1M4&sr=8-7

Character - are those Yale books text books, or just articles/stories? I couldn't tell from the descriptions on their website. Thanks

I can't really bring myself to read comics or kids books, as I spend the rest of my time playing with my two toddlers, I really need to read more adult materials when I am not with them - hahaha Anyway, as they get older, I will read their school books with them (they will attend a Chinese primary school here in Beijing), so I will get to read kids materials then (this is why i am studying now, so I can be a good mummy and read their text books and reading books, and then discuss the same topics with them in English, to keep their English skills up too)

[gato]

The Zhongguancun Bookstore on the Third Ring Road by Peking University has a large selection of Chinese as a foreign language books. You might consider going there to browse a bit.

There are many reading practice books at the beginner level (初级) and intermediate level (中级) available. Intermediate might be a bit of a stretch for you at the moment, but the material is probably more interesting.

On the studychineseculture.com site, you can view excerpts from the books by clicking on the "Selected Parts" picture links.

http://www.studychineseculture.com/book.asp?id=1333

《初级汉语阅读教程》 Elementary Chinese Reading Course (1)

Author：Zhang Shitao,Liu Ruoyun

http://www.studychineseculture.com/book.asp?id=1335

《中级汉语阅读教程》Intermediate Chinese Reading Course

作者:刘若云 编者:周小兵 张世涛

Edited September 21, 2009 at 03:44 AM by gato

[crjcrj]

Thanks Gato, I'll find some time to get there, in the meantime, I think you have all given me enough reading material to last a while!

Or at least enough to tide me over until there are new Chinese Breeze books

http://www.studychineseculture.com/book.asp?id=4237

Has 2000 words based on 1033 characters (HSK A plus some B they say)

These also look interesting are possibly the right level:

http://www.studychineseculture.com/book.asp?id=1468

http://www.studychineseculture.com/book.asp?id=3272

http://www.studychineseculture.com/book.asp?id=3273

Probably a bit all above my level, but that must be better than reading below my level, which is what I am doing now (although it is great for reading speed, grammar, character recognition, etc...)

Thanks again - super helpful!

[character]

Character - are those Yale books text books, or just articles/stories? I couldn't tell from the descriptions on their website. Thanks

The 600 character book is stories with vocabulary and includes a small section on grammar.

I haven't seen the others, but this review of book one seems to indicate they may be more toward textbooks than you would like.

To read texts with embedded pinyin, you can cut a piece of paper/card stock so it has a small empty rectangle just big enough to show one line of Chinese.

[renzhe]

You could also try comics. They are easier than proper literature, and you get context from the pictures.

[ilovexiamen]

You are right, Chinese Breeze is amazing. If you have already read all of the 500 level, I would recommend reading 说汉语谈文化 ISBN 978-7-5619-0276-9 (a bit dated but still really good), 高级汉语口语 ISBN978-7-5619-0439-8 (not really 高级, it is listed at 3rd year but probably is second year), another newly written graded reader series called Graded Chinese Reader 1-3(all new, fresh, but unfortunately all have pin yin), or a new book I recently ran into called 中国概况 ISBN 978-7-301-02479-9(an intro to China, which is a mix of history, geography, economics and more all at a grade/middle school level. This book is dry but makes you feel for once you are learning subjects in the language, rather than using subjects to learn the language). Hope this is helpful!

Cliff

[Chinadoog]

The ''Read it Now'' series seems really good. Only 25 yuan for each book and they all come with an audio CD. There are at least 6 books. I bought 4 of them, but they're above my level. I can read about 800 characters and more than 2,000 words, but these books have too much new vocab for me. Hopefully I'll be ready for them in a couple more months

[natra]

Have you considered trying to read Chinese literature and not a 对外汉语 textbook?

[jbradfor]

nciku seems to have some reading practice texts. I haven't tried any of them, but they look interesting. Related to them, you can also search "Beijing DFHL Company" on iTunes.

[knadolny]

Have you considered trying to read Chinese literature and not a 对外汉语 textbook?

Ok so first off, I am the author of the following book, but I think it might fit some people's needs reading this thread.

The book is called Capturing Chinese: Short Stories from Lu Xun's Nahan. I use the stories from Lu Xun's Nahan to make a reader of Chinese literature. Footnotes define difficult vocabulary and places and pinyin is accompanied paragraph by paragraph. The text is in simplified characters and is the same as the original. Audio files are also included for each story read by a male and female native speaker.

I am currently getting ready to publish Volume II which will use Lu Xun's The Real Story of Ah Q. In this next version I have put the pinyin at the end of each chapter.

The stories are difficult, but are great reading.

[tooironic]

All Things Considered by Chih-p'ing Chou (Editor), Yan Xia (Editor) and Meow Hui Goh (Editor) is pretty huge. I happened to come across it at a second hand bookshop and have enjoyed reading it so far. It's at an intermediate/advanced level.

[马盖云]

Kevin, thanks for reminding us about your book. It looked familiar, and I realize I had downloaded some of the free pdf's from your website a while ago. I am almost a t a level where I think I could give it a shot! I think the book looks great, though. Have you given any thought to selling it as a Kindle edition? (or other ebook format, but I'm a Kindle owner!)

The new Kindle has good Chinese character support now. (although I don't know how well PinYin tone marks will display, and how the formatting would look with your alternating hanzi/piyin/footnotes layout)

Anyway, I clicked the "tell the publisher you want a Kindle edition" button on Amazon, as I am trying to lighten my load of dead-tree books, but am really interested in your book.

Also, anything else coming out (besides the AhQ)? Anything simpler? There is not much on Kindle for Chinese language stuff yet, so since I have the ear of a published author, I thought I'd give it a shot :-)

My wife is flying to Tokyo tomorrow for a week. I'm getting a little jealous!

thanks,

[knadolny]

马盖云:

Anyway, I clicked the "tell the publisher you want a Kindle edition" button on Amazon

Nice. I wonder if Amazon will track me down. I have thought about doing a Kindle edition and I was running into problems with the footnotes and the Chinese character support. Maybe it is time to look into it again.

anything else coming out (besides the AhQ)? Anything simpler?

I do have other ideas in the works. I am working on Lu Xun's A New Year's Sacrifice as a shorter book. I thought I would do one more Lu Xun story before moving on to other authors. Then after that I am thinking a compilation of various authors (I am working on which ones to include now).

As for something simpler, I need to think about that one. Real literature tends to be more difficult then the textbook stories so it might not be original literature but something abridged instead.