8 hour layover in Taipei, hoping to buy some books!

[qitiandasheng]

大家好, longtime lurker first time poster!

 

I’m flying back home from Japan next week and will have an 8 hour layover at Taoyuan Int’l. It’ll take some time to travel into Taipei and go back through security, but I should have at least 3-4 hours in the city I think. 
 

I’m working through a self-study list heavily inspired by this post by wibr, and I’d love to take advantage of this opportunity to buy as many of these books as I can carry as my “personal item” XD. 

 

ICLP Supplementary Chinese Readers

中國寓言

中國的風俗習慣(一)

中國的風俗習慣(二)

中國民間故事(一)

中國民間故事(二)

中國歷史故事(一)

中國歷史故事(二)

 

Vivian Ling and More ICLP Supplementary Chinese Readers

思想與社會

當代中國散文選

當代中國短篇小說選

中國新時期名作選讀

從精讀到泛讀

 

So, I guess my question is… where to go? I’ve heard Lucky Bookstore is a good place for textbooks. Will they have the first seven ICLP books at least?

[wibr]

Lucky Bookstore is your best bet I would say, at least I am not aware of any better option. I am fairly certain I got all or at least most of the books starting from number 13 of my list you linked from there, but that was several years ago and I haven't been to the store since.

[TheWayfarer]

I can give a negative recommendation. I was in Taipei recently and heard Eslite is the best bookshop in the city. Don't bother. This is the main location of a well-known chain. It's quite large, has a wide variety of Chinese and English books, and to be fair is pretty good for the most part. However, they don't offer much for learners of Chinese. It was pretty disappointing, really. So many books, but so few for Chinese learners.

[TheBigZaboon]

Just my two Taiwanese dollars on the Lucky Bookstore... Very, very nice people... When I go there, they often sit my wife and me down and serve us tea while they wait on us...  But they can't always satisfy everybody all the time, and especially at the time someone shows up with a big list of stuff they want NYOW...

 

If I were you, I'd call ahead of time, as far ahead as you can, tell them what you want, how many copies of each, and when (day, month, year, and time of day) you intend to show up. They will be able to tell you what they have and don't have (and more importantly, what they can't get). That will save (face for them, and disappointment for you) everyone's feelings, and make for good business all around...

 

Keep in mind that some of the more popular programs are pretty stingy with their materials, keeping the supplies for actual students, and sometimes restricting distribution only to actual students. Also, look at some of the MTC's newer stuff.

 

Just remember, you may have to try some horse trading to get what you want.

 

Just sayin' (based on experience)...

 

TBZ

 

[hungrybrain]

I hope this gets to you in time for your trip! I second TheBigZaboon's comment. Give Lucky Bookstore a call (02-8369-5556~8) or possibly email them (shtabook@ms38.hinet.net) to let them know what you're looking for and when. They do tend to carry all of the the series you listed and the Vivian Ling books as well as some other great series I've been using in conjunction with them.
 

My favorite is a newer "Easy to Learn Chinese" series, edited by Cristina Yang. Here are the ones I've bought and my estimate of where their difficulty would rank among the volumes of the supplementary readers series:
 

寓言 (Chinese Fables) - difficulty: 2
俗語與俚語 (Common sayings and Slang) - difficulty: 3.5
神奇及傳奇 (Magic and Fantasy/Legends) - difficulty: 5

 

華語趣味成語 (Fun Chinese Chengyu) - difficulty: 2

新聞華語 (Newspaper Chinese) - difficulty: 3

華語詩詞賞析 (Chinese Poetry Appreciation) - difficulty: ???

The first three books in the series is somewhat similar to the "supplemental readers" in terms of topic but they're recently published, and have a few differences in format. They also include Pinyin, faintly segment characters into words (by putting slightly less space between characters within a word) and have vocabulary sections, some brief comprehension questions after each story and in the case of the Chengyu book, a few English explanations. The vocabulary sections are just compact tables without example sentences, so the amount of Chinese text is more than double what it is in the supplementary reader series (which dedicates a lot of pages to vocab items and example sentences. The 成語 and the 俗語與俚語 both do a fantastic job surfacing phrases that are useful for intermediate-advanced learners.

 

One thing to watch out for is that 寓言 uses older variants of characters, for mood I think. It didn't pose any problems for me in terms of understanding what was going on, but you wouldn't want to take pictures of the vocab tables, copy paste the lists into Anki and use it to drill writing characters.

 

Difficulty of the supplementary readers series for reference:

 

中國寓言 - difficulty: 1
中國的風俗習慣(一) - difficulty: 2
中國歷史故事(一) - difficulty: 3
中國歷史故事(二) - difficulty: 4
當代中國散文選 - difficulty: 5
當代中國短篇小說選 - difficulty: 6

 

中國民間故事(一) - difficulty: 1.25
中國民間故事(二) - difficulty: 2.75

 

中國的風俗習慣(二) - difficulty: 3.5

 

北京人的發現 - difficulty: ???

The original four books start at the 1000 character level and add 400 per book. Volumes 5 and 6 continue from there. The 民間故事 books were written a bit later and aren't part of the main sequence. They also start at 1000 characters and add 500 per book but include more vocabulary items per chapter and part II is a bit literary. In the forward, the editor suggests reading it in tandem with or alternating with the original series to reinforce the overlapping vocabulary.

 

風俗習慣(二) was written many more years later and it assumes you know the most common 1000 characters, plus 400 from 寓言 and 400 from part 1 of 風俗習慣, just like 歷史故事(一). It's considerably harder though, since the new characters and phrases it introduces are less common, especially for a foreigner who isn't spending a lot of time at temples and festivals. I decided to put it off until after finishing volume 4.

 

I like both editors' work quite a bit and have been reading both in tandem since I discovered Cristina Yang's series. After starting on vol. 1 of the supplementary readers this spring, I'm now about to start vol 4 (and have read the 民間故事 books). In the Easy to Learn series, I've read most of 寓言 a lot of 華語趣味成語, a bit of 俗語與俚語 and just started 新聞華語 this month), but every few weeks, I flip to a random vocab list or text of the harder ones to see what % of it is still new to me. Sometimes I re-read stories from an easier book if I'm tired or just feel like it.

With the volume of reading material covering a lot of the same characters and vocab, I'm not putting much time into flash cards though I do browse through the ones wibr made now and then.

 

Moderator note: 'Christina' corrected to 'Cristina' at request of poster.

[TheBigZaboon]

Just curious... Any audio available for the Christina Yang books???

 

(By the way, if you're doing a search, and you don't get a hit on these books, some sites spell her first name as "Cristina"...)

 

Just askin' (for a friend)...

 

 

 

TBZ 

[hungrybrain]

You're right! I misspelled her name! There's no h.

I don't know of any audio versions, unfortunately. I'd love to buy them if they existed, though. The chengyu book and the slang book are the best of their type I've every studied. The selections are very well selected to be useful for modern usage. Once I started studying them, I started hearing the references in spoken conversation everywhere.

Here are some direct links so people know what the books look like:

Chengyu https://www.books.com.tw/products/0010514789?loc=P_br_r0vq68ygz_D_2aabd0_C_3
News: https://www.books.com.tw/products/0010798541?sloc=main
Fables: https://www.books.com.tw/products/0010693837?sloc=main
Slang: https://www.books.com.tw/products/0010732072?sloc=main

Legends: https://www.books.com.tw/products/0010772534?sloc=main

 

[qitiandasheng]

Thank you all for the very helpful replies. I shot them an email, and they replied confirming that they had all of the books on my list in stock. Now I’ll just have to figure out how feasible it’ll be to bring back a dozen+ textbooks as a carry-on 😅

 

On 11/10/2024 at 11:09 PM, hungrybrain said:

My favorite is a newer "Easy to Learn Chinese" series, edited by Cristina Yang.

Really appreciate this recommendation too! I’ll try to find those books as well to compare in person.

[Lu]

On 11/12/2024 at 3:35 PM, qitiandasheng said:

Now I’ll just have to figure out how feasible it’ll be to bring back a dozen+ textbooks as a carry-on 😅

A friend of mine had a tactic that worked well for her: leave the big heavy carry-on with the people who are seeing you off (if present, of course), so that the attendant at the check-in desk doesn't see it. Then, carry the bag as if it is not heavy at all and in fact quite light.

 

Another tactic is to put the small heavy things in your pockets. Or to plead with the relevant attendants that you're a diligent student of their beautiful language, can't find these books back home, so can you pretty please bring them with you on the plane.

 

Good luck with the finding & carrying!

[hungrybrain]

On 11/12/2024 at 10:35 PM, qitiandasheng said:

Really appreciate this recommendation too! I’ll try to find those books as well to compare in person.

The Lucky Bookstore staff is how I learned about them. They're very helpful if you tell them what you've studied and what you're looking for!