Oldschool textbooks?

[Chinadoog]

Hey guys I'm looking for the names of any older textbooks that might have been around like.. 20-30 years ago for learning Chinese. The only one I know of is the Practical Chinese Reader.

Any others?

Thanks

[imron]

The FSI course and John DeFrancis' Chinese Reader series come to mind.

[Olle Linge]

I used some older textbooks for my bachelor thesis analysis:

Chen, Ru; Wang Tian-hui. 1991. 汉语情景会话: Chinese Situational Dialogues.

Beijing: Peking University Press.

DeFrancis, John. 1976. 初級漢語課本: Chuji Hanyu Keben: Beginning Chinese

(Second Revised Edition). London: Yale University Press.

Li, Chuan-huai. (1988). 实用速成汉语读本: Practical Spoken Chinese. Beijing:

外语教学与研究出版社.

Wang, Guo-an. 1996. Learn to Speak Chinese (Book 1). Hong Kong: The

Commercial Press.

[elliott50]

Chinadoog, I too find old chinese textbooks fascinating and buy them whenever I see them. As a result, I seem to have built up a collection...

The oldest textbook I have is "Teach Yourself Books: Chinese" by H. R. Williamson, which was first printed in 1947. It uses traditional characters and Wade-Giles romanization. Republished in 1977 with ISBN 0 340 05773 4

The oldest linguistic study I have on "the Chinese Language" was written by R.A.D. Forrest in 1965 and published by Faber and Faber in London. It does not have an ISBN number.

My second oldest textbooks were written in 1971 and published in 1975 by 商务印书馆, they are "Elementary Chinese Part I and Part II / 基础汉语 上册、下册" and contain wonderful sentences condemning "Japanese invaders / 日本鬼子" and praising "people's communes / 人民公社". Unfortunately they do not have an ISBN number.

My favourite textbook, which I used at university and was still in use until very recently, dates from 1982, it is P.C. T'UNG and D.E. POLLARD's "Colloquial Chinese / 汉语口语", all written in pinyin, with it's accompanying 2 simplified & traditional character books. ISBN 0 415 01860 9

I have also enjoyed the "Elementary Chinese Readers / 基础汉语课本“ series of 5 volumes (1-4 & "supplement"), published by Sinolingua, which date from 1980 and have many charming traditional and "patriotic" stories in the later books. Supplement ISBN: 7 80052 045 5

The original version of Helen T. Lin's excellent "Speaking Chinese about China / 话说中国" volume 1, also slightly imbued with a "red" world view, was published in 1980 by Sinolingua. ISBN 7 80052 098 6

The original version of "A new introduction to Classical Chinese" by Raymond Dawson was copyright 1984, but the version I have was published in 1993 by Oxford University Press. ISBN 0 19 815460 7

I also have another few books dating from the early 1990's:

• Chinese for social interaction in 40 lessons / 交际汉语40课， 1993, Sinolingua, ISBN 7 80052 248 2
  
• Spoken Chinese / 中国话，1990, Sinolingua, ISBN 7 80052 141 9
  
• Conversational Chinese 301 / 汉语会话301句，1990，Beijing Language Institute Press, ISBN 7 5619 0095 3
  
• Chinese through pictures / 汉语教学图册，1990，Sinolingua, ISBN 7 80052 068 4
  

There may be more old textbooks lurking somewhere on my shelves, but that is probably enough for one post!

[luozhen]

Hugh Stimson, Parker Po-Fei Huang Spoken Standard Chinese and Written Standard Chinese. 1970s

My uni was still using them in the late 1990s.

[querido]

1958 flavored instruction still available new (as of Fall 2011):

Modern Chinese, A Basic Course 250pp. Version with cassettes still being sold new on Amazon, $9.99.

Modern Chinese, A Second Course 470pp. No audio. $4.64 on Amazon right now!

"By the Faculty of Peking University"

First edition 1958, revised in 1963. Dover 1971, 2002.

Lots of "flavor", "tongzhi", some incomplete simplifications, etc.

Volume one was my first Chinese textbook; I bought it some years before I really studied it; it was in Barnes & Noble, etc, for many years.

If I recall correctly these books were used at e.g. Harvard for some time.

I was always fond of the extra-disciplined delivery of the audio sold with volume 1. The original audio was recorded onto phonograph records in 1958. I think the cassettes released by Dover in 1971 were just copied from these disks, because the old pop and crackle are heard easily. I digitized this version. The CDs that come with it now are still just slightly noise-reduced copies of these originals. On amazon right now, I don't see the *newer* CD version; you might want to hurry if you're interested.

"Volume 2 includes stories with some old-fashioned heroic slogans. One of these is about a steelworker critically burned at work. The story opines that while the Western doctors would have given up on him, the Chinese doctors labored heroically and saved him because, when the man gave his reason for wanting to live, he said "Steel needs me". It is beautiful if read sympathetically."

Hey, the Grammar Summary, the Vocabulary, and some of the text (see p. 393) of volume two can be viewed here: http://books.google.com/books?id=9nQOyOp-4mcC&pg=PT1&lpg=PT1&dq=%22modern+chinese+reader%22&source=bl&ots=Y0TMhFGApa&sig=gaGMiNLT7n-2lZHAZT0UhGj2BNQ&hl=en&ei=PgygTo_YHsrq0QHdn_y0BA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CEkQ6AEwAzgK#v=onepage&q=%22modern%20chinese%20reader%22&f=false

[roddy]

Sounds like a good opportunity to post this - fairly sure I've posted it before, but not sure where. I got it originally from Brendan of Bokane.org.

beida_text.pdf

[yonglin]

http://books.google....ader%22&f=false

The amount of er-hua in this text is quite amazing, e.g., 小说儿，时候儿. I feel sort of happy they didn't standardize putonghua like that!

[Chinadoog]

Cool, thanks a lot guys.

[HedgePig]

I remember Roddy posting a link to site that had scanned in some very old Chinese textbooks (from the 19th adn early 20th centuries). It contained was some wonderful stuff.

I was about to say I couldn't find the original post when I searched for "goats horns" and it turned up at the top of the list. So here is the link to Roddy's original post which in turn has links to the www.archive.org site.

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/30993-early-chinese-textbooks-thanks-to-c-pol-and-archiveorg/

[roddy]

Of course, had forgotten about that. Searching on Kongfz.com may also turn up leads.

[knickherboots]

Really enjoyed Roddy's text, not just for the content, which is even more melodramatic than contemporary texts I read in the 1980s, but also for the interesting interim simplified Chinese.

[YuehanHao]

One of the first texts I studied was Chinese for Advanced Beginners by Ellie Mao Mok. It must have been from the early 1980s and was obtained from a public library. Of the character/plot-driven style, one of the main threads involved a cute and amusing unrequited love story between two of the younger generation, 王文山 and 钱爱华 (e.g., "Wenshan thinks, 'If Aihua gets sick, I will surely go visit and bring her flowers,' -- but Aihua never gets sick!"). It is packed full of visits to Beijing landmarks, even a trip to 四季青公社. Fun and worthwhile; a good text.

[furiop]

 My first trial to study chinese, in 1971, without success.

One of first manuals for foreign students.

The manual is the first version of the 1980 "Manuel de chinois fondamental" or, in english, "Elementary chinese readers".

A you can see, there's some political/revolutionary word to learn...

 

[snowflake]

When I was at university, we used the Yale Press books that had Yale romanisation like

..."Speak Mandarin" by Henry C. Fenn , M. Gardner Tewksbury

..."Chinese Dialogues" by Pao Ch'en Lee, Henry C. Fenn, Fred Fang-Yu Wang.  

There was a whole series of books, some which are still available though now with pinyin. 

Actually these are older than 20-30 years....

[imron]

8 hours ago, snowflake said:

Fred Fang-Yu Wang

He wrote an excellent book on Chinese cursive handwriting.

[889]

Yes, we've talked about that book before here. It's called Chinese Cursive Script: An Introduction to Handwriting in Chinese. So far as I know, it's the only work available in English that walks you through normal Chinese handwriting. Note that the printing quality of the later editions is not too good, so try to get a used early edition.

[Tomsima]

After failing to get a copy of the intermediate book, I have been working through his "introduction to chinese letters in cursive script“ (1967) every now and again over the last few months. Highly recommended for anyone interested in learning to read handwritten chinese. Be aware this book does not use standardised pinyin despite its later publication; this is not a big problem as there is very little in the way of vocab lists anyway.