Chinese Readers beats Chinese Breeze to Traditional Market

[leosmith]

Chinese Readers (中文讀本) is a (relatively) new set of readers very much in the style of Chinese Breeze. However they are available in both Simplified and Traditional characters, while Chinese breeze is available in simplified only. (I haven't seen the Simplified versions of Chinese Readers, but I assume they exist because my traditional book covers have an empty checkbox for that option)

I found these literally in the last hour of my visit to Taiwan, in what I believe was called the "ESLite" book store in Taipei. This is a quick summary before I jump on my plane to Japan; fell free to correct it. I may update it later.

There are

3 books at the beginner (300 to 500 character) level

1 book at the intermediate (500 to 1000 character) level

2 books at the advanced (1000 to 1500 character) level

Character levels are my best guess - I found no info on this, but I'm quite certain about the beginner level.

These are short books with no pinyin in the main reading, but a few indexed vocab words at the bottom of the page with pinyin. There are some questions at the end of the chapters. And of course, there is a CD for each book. I haven't completed a book or CD, but will let you know what I think when I do. Feel free to beat me to the punch.

So someone from Taiwan seems to have copied an idea from the mainland. That seems so unfair.

Chinese Readers

Edited March 22, 2010 at 12:31 PM by leosmith

[taijidan]

If anyone can find a link for the simplified version pls post it here.

[leosmith]

If anyone can find a link for the simplified version pls post it here.

seen this?

[jbradfor]

I think taijidan was asking about Chinese Readers, not Chinese Breeze. Unless I missed it among the 62 posts there....

[taijidan]

Yeah - I was interested in the Chinese Readers.

(I already have all the Chinese Breeze)

Thanks anyway.

[leosmith]

Got it - sorry about that; thought you might not know about those. Maybe someone good at Mandarin can poke around in the site I posted site and find the simplified versions.

[roddy]

As far as I can see there aren't any - the publishers site just lists those six. Write them and ask, you might spur them on.

[CrassPip]

Are these traditional Chinese Readers available in the US? I haven't found them. If someone could post the ISBNs, it would be a great help.

Thanks.

[jbradfor]

The ISBN appears to be in the link in the OP.

[CrassPip]

Sorry, yes, you are correct. The isbn's are there (the link wasn't working before I posted.)

So yeah, they're on amazon.

Thanks.

[Mati1]

The links in here are dead. Does anyone have any information about the books the OP is referring to? A quick search in four shops didn't get me anywhere, but my Chinese is not good enough to really navigate Chinese online shops.

[Geiko]

I have these books, I bought them at China Sprout. I also found them in an online bookshop called Kingstone (I never ordered there, I can't recommend it): Kingstone . Or you can buy some of them at Amazon for 200$ 

[Leirosa]

4 hours ago, Geiko said:

I have these books, I bought them at China Sprout. I also found them in an online bookshop called Kingstone (I never ordered there, I can't recommend it): Kingstone . Or you can buy some of them at Amazon for 200$ 

 

I've bought books from Kingstone a number of times. it's good for books from Taiwan, and the shipping is very fast, but it gets really expensive really fast (but still cheaper than that Amazon price). The last two times I was also charged customs at the door (they shipped with DHL), so I would avoid it if you can find the books anywhere else. They do have Paypal as a payment option at least, though.