China Books

This is the third volume in the NPCR series, a well written and structured Chinese language textbook for non-native speakers. If your high school, college or university does not have a chinese language program you are missing out.

I have used the original Practical Chinese Reader series and found it very useful. I was so impressed with this new textbook and workbook. There are many improvements over the old series.
1. The book is simply larger and easier to read.
2. Chinese characters are intoduced and reinforced in a very effective way. The meaning of character parts is well-explained.
3. Grammar and usage are much more clearly explained.
4. The book uses homophones (some with the same tone, some different) to highlight the importance of proper tones.
5. The workbooks and actvities are interesting and they have really helped me retain the material. The old series activities were too formulaic and boring.
6. The lessons are longer (14 lessons in Book 1 versus 30 lessons in the old series). This gives you more time to actually use the material in different ways. I find it more effective.

I'll be finished with Book 2 in a few weeks and look forward to using all 6 books in the series.

Good luck with your Chinese study.

Based on the classic Chinese textbook Practical Chinese Reader, the New Practical Chinese Reader is finally here. In this complete revision of the old text (in fact, it is a completely new book, not a simple revision), the student will go through a total of six volumes, taking the student from the beginning level to the end of the intermediate level. Six books in all, the whole set is intended to cover three years of college-level instruction. The layout is excellent and the content is interesting; the first three volumes contains dialogues and expository text (volumes 4-6 is not yet released) that introduce the reader to aspects of Chinese culture and communication, and in keeping with the old Practical Chinese Reader, the grammatical explanations are excellent and clearly illustrate the usage of Chinese grammar. Furthermore, the new volume is written with the HSK guidelines in mind, so if you are planning to take this test, this is the textbook for you. Overall, this is probably the best textbook for English speakers to learn Chinese. Note: simplified characters are used; the grammar in the first three volumes corresponds more or less to the grammar covered in volumes 1-2 of the old Practical Chinese Reader, the vocabulary selection, however, is completely updated to cover usage of Chinese today.

[Volume 1: 7561910401; Volume 2: 7561911297; Volume 3: 756191251x]

This is a very good book on a subject that is very interesting. I thought that John Kuo Wei Tchen did a great job.

In New York Before Chinatown John Kuo Wei Tchen explores the dramatic shift in representations of Chinese people throughout the 19th century that, he argues, are essential to the development of modern "white" identity. Tchen expands the late Arab/American critic Edward Said's theoretical framework "orientalism", which famously illuminated the fear, loathing and desire of the West for the East, to include cultural phenomena intrinsic to US American life. In doing so he argues that orientalism has been instrumental in forming US American cultural identity. Writing in 1999 Tchen modestly offers this study as an attempt to tease out "subtle patterns" in U.S. history. The academic discretion he employs in so framing his argument belies its power and, in a post 9/11 world seems almost quaint. There can be no question that orientalist scenarios are shaping our contemporary historical moment.

Beginning in the colonial period Tchen describes the struggle to establish a distinct American identity in orientalist terms. He writes, "The beginnings of US modernity in (the) decades after the revolution...were characterized by the rise of self-made men and radical changes in everyday economic, political and social life." The flux of this period was mediated through Chinese consumable goods as US American identities, caught between the modes of patrician Europe and the needs of the new nation, cohered. Tchen emphasizes the passion for collecting Chinese porcelain, which became known as "china" and the merchants who sold it "Chinamen and women." In this way oriental objects came to represent Asian people, a conflation that persists.

While the "tasteful display" of oriental objects was a signifier of wealth and class in Europe and colonial America such "luxury and profuseness" was viewed by some as cause for alarm. British novelist Tobias Smollet warned against oriental luxuries as harbingers of "Indigence and Effeminacy: which prepared the Minds of the People for Corruption (and) Subjugation." Smollet and his contemporaries read a threat into the absence of actual Chinese people that their luxury items represented. His use of feminine terms as a frame for moral degeneracy that prefigures a "fall" is a sexist tactic not exclusive to orientalist scenarios but nonetheless often finds its expression there. The eastern other often vacillates between a degenerate effeminacy and a robust, sexually threatening vitality: an iteration that Tchen describes later as the "Chinese devil man."

Tchen notes that despite such warnings the fashion for oriental objects ran unabated in colonial America. He writes, "Average Americans chafed at any sumptuary limits on consumables deemed foreign and therefore taboo." I'd argue that this early American exercise in white privilege is a scenario that plays itself out in our current moment not over Chinese tea, but Middle Eastern oil. Even as racialized representations of Arabs--which echo the effeminate/hyper-masculine representations of the 19th century Chinese--abound in our culture the hunger for Middle Eastern oil only grows. As in the "American century" our "desire for `oriental' goods (is) stronger than the threat of `oriental despotism.'"

This pattern of orientalist imagining of eastern others from paternalistic delight, to sexual fear (characterized by moral outrage) to demonization (characterized by physical and or mental abjection) plays itself out in the past via Tchen's study and the present through the ethno-racist tropes applied by the Bush presidency in its foreign policy. The arguments John Kuo Wei Tchen makes in New York Before Chinatown have, through the events of the past several years, become overt expressions of the material culture of the United States.

The study of the Chinese in America has been given a major boost with the publication of this important book by historian John Kuo Wei Tchen. In clear and vivid prose, Tchen has altered the landscape of what has heretofore been accepted as Chinese-American history. From George Washington's porcelain tea set to the Bowery to "Siamese" twins Chang and Eng, the book is filled with eye opening original research and thought provoking conclusions. Sure to become a standard reference in the coming years.

This was a personal account of what it was like for a girl and her family to be on the wrong end of the stick when Chairman Mao instigated the cultural revolution in China. The universal cult of this old bag of wind is revealed and implemented by the simpletons. This is a personal account that takes place within a historical happening. It is of subjective perceptions, emotions, and experiences. It is a biographical account that covers many, many different areas of political, sexual, familial, and professional life. Her intimate friendships were described as well as the "gang" of folks she gravitated towards while she was shunned by her community. How her grandparents were treated right in front of her was disgusting. What is such a paradox about the Communist cultural brainwashing was that the "heroes" of the cultural revolution, became the vermin and enemy in the snap of a finger. Almost always, the victims were innocent. Niu-Niu grew and succeeded and wrote a book about it. The cultural revolution seems to parallel the Salem Witch trials. Hopefully, the Chinese will have the objectivity to think for themselves and realise what a disaster it was. Give it a spin.

This is a truly frightening tale of perhaps the darkest days in human history. Compared to the evils of Chinese Communism, the crimes of Western Colonialists seem to pale in comparison. The Nanjing Massacre is nothing when compared to a Red Guard raid of a "counter-revolutionary" enclave. Chinese do not like to admit it, but more Chinese were killed by Chinese than by British, Japanese, or Russians. This book shows in great detail just how evil the Chinese Communists are, and also shows a lot of the dark side of Chinese culture. Chinese tortures are very real, and these evil acts are still being carried out today. Let this book be a reminder: do not trust what Beijing says about world peace. They are evil.

This is a powerful book. It should be read by anyone who thinks that socialism offers a chance to better humanity. I found the book engaging, uplifting, sad and horrible all at the same time. This was especially true because the book is not fiction. The arm chair socialist of the US and Europe would do well to look at the terrible cost their politics have extracted from the poor all over the world. This book is a good place to start. China has not recovered from these events and the memory of them should not be allowed to die. The cultural revolution was a natural outgrowth of socalist ideas as articulated by Marx and every nation with a communist government has had similar episodes. Mao killed millions. Millions more than Hittler, Millions more than the Crusades. He was the greatest murderer of all time. This book tells the story of one person who escaped, if only just barely.

This narrative, the continuing saga of Baba(The first being Baba, A Return to China upon my Father's Shoulders), is apparently the second in Belle Yang's trilogy of a Chinese life-world and is summed up in the musings of Baba "Justice is not in the hands of man. Justice is not in the universe. There are only the inevitable, impersonal laws of change and flux...It is the Dao, the way of nature, the endless cycles of growth and decay, a cosmos spinning with opposing, conflicting forces.". I look forward to Belle's projected third volume of this trilogy (see [...])

Naren Jackson

I was unsure what to make of this book when I first ran across it. The title and colorful cover pulled at me, but the delightful story-telling style kept me reading.

It's a sophisticated story about the adventures of a young Manchurian boy, an Oriental version of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, if you will.

I enjoyed the story, but now that I have a son it takes on a whole new dimension. I'll be reading it to him years before he'll be able to read it for himself. It'll join the stories of Ruyard Kipling and J. R. R. Tolkien.

Highly recommended.

A very insighful story of author's dad and his travels to find freedom. His determination to keep moving south out of his home in Manchuria. Leaving behind his remaining family and all of what was left of their family lands. A very intense story of his travails and his natural intuition to get around problems when he was faced with some very dangerous situations. Knowing how he met his wife and finally moved on to the USA. A great story.

Olga Yunter was born in the summer of 1900 in a small trading outpost on the Siberian steppes. and ahd a happy childhood there, living a life experiencing the rich culture of the many nations that lived in the region.

But as millions of lives were lost in the bloody Russian Revolution of 1917, Olga and her family were caught up in her struggle to save the town from the marauding bloodthirsty Bolsheviks. Olga, with a price on her head for anti-Bolshevik activities was forced to flee Russia for northern China.

She lost her home three times- first to the Bolshevik takeover of Russia, then to the Japanese invasion of China during World War II, and finally to the brutal takeover of China in the late 1940s by the
Communists.
We learn of the life of her Olga from her childhood in Siberia, where she married an Englishman and lived through invasion and civil war. A rich and eventful life on four continents told told by compassion and passion by the heroine of this true story's granddaughter.
Interesting things we can glean from this book is that a large proportion of the Bolshevik forces during the Russian Civil War (1918-1920) were German and Austrian prisoners of war. The Bolsheviks were from the beginning a movement against the Russian people.
That the Bolsheviks were the first to use cattle cars to transport people to labour camps and forced exile, and that there were various different foreign communities in the northern Chinese town of Tientsin were Olga and her family lived for some years.

The story of a remarkable woman living through earth-shattering and bloody events, and about experiences with people from all different walks of life and the many different nations and traditions with which she came into contact.

I have never read a more compelling story. The author's grandmother Olga was a fascinating woman who led a remarkable life spanning three continents. Ms. Williams has woven the stories Olga told her over the years together with extensive research to create a vivid biography. It is filled with human drama and rich history -- much of it unfamiliar to Westerners. Lively, artful writing enhances this extraordinary book which I thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend.

The machinations of war and revolution come alive as the threads of one family's life are interwoven throughout the history of two World Wars, the Bolshevik Revolution and the rise of Communism.

This book was especially poignant for me: my grandmother too was born in Russia. White Russian or Red, ordinary people were capriciously affected by the power struggle. Coincidentally,I read the book while on a two week trip to Shanghai, China and walked along the Bund (where some of the old buildings still remain standing) imagining the countless people affected by the Japanese invasion and by Mao's rise to power. I've also visited Victoria in beautiful British Columbia, Canada where Olga temporarily took refuge.

This book has given me an understanding at how quickly events change. I pray that the free world will never again be overrun by those who wish to impose their views on society.

Both Volume 1 and Volume 2 of the books with the above title are wonderful additions to the many children books that I have read to my children and my grandchildren. The stories will stimulate the minds of youngsters to think creatively and to learn the challenge of solving problems.

Great reading! Readers learn tradition and history while hearing very intriguing stories which make children (and adults) think. Wonderful way to instill values in children. We need more books like this. Reflecting on what you do and the consequences (positive and negative) are very important to know as you grow up. Looking forward to more stories!

100 Best Children's Stories from China ia perfect book for classroom use. I have found it an excellent resource for my student storytellers. The background information on the stories gives authenticity to the cultural content. When my students need to learn a story for performance, I encourage them to pick short stories with dialogue and interesting characters. This book is well written with intriguing characters,simple language which is easy enough for a young reader to enjoy, and enough plot detail to engage an adult reader. For parents and educators the book provides great read aloud content. Traditional values and cultural wisdom are embedded in the content. The thinking questions can provide a starting place for moral and character education discussions. I am awaiting 100 more stories from the authors.

Excellent book. Has exceedingly great pictures of modern HK, invaluable, really invaluable. That's about all I can say.

This is THE book on Hong Kong. The pictures are amazing and show how enormus the city actually. The style is very much like the "Above" books by Robert Cameron, though this one has a map to show where the pictures were taken as well.

This book is made following the same style of Cameron's "Above" Series. Lots of old pictures compared to new ones, where you can see how much has HK changed in a short time. Amazing pictures of the skyscraper architecture of this outstanding city, aerial views of Central HK, Kowloon, the new airport, New Territories. This is a MUST HAVE book. One of the BEST aerial pictures book I have ever bought.

This book wonderfully commmerates the Yankee Clippers, Pan-Am's historic aircrafts, that united the Pacific Rim from 1935-46.

The book gives complete coverage of this exciting era of pioneering air travel and discovery.

Never before had aircraft bridged the Pacific and never has a book covered the era so well.

Pan Am's Clippers flying the Pacific served as a bridge between the age of the ship and the age of the plane. Yes, of course there were planes before 1935, and there are still ships, but Pan Am changed the concept. Now air mail and air passenger service was a reality.

This huge book, obviously a labor of love lasting for many years is a masterpiece. It has literally hundreds of photographs of planes, people, and the collectable memorabilia from Pan Am's Clipper days.

Each aircraft used in Pacific service is described -- there were only twelve. Three were Sikorsky S-42's, three were Martin M-130's, six were Boeing B-314's. It is remarkable that the story of twelve aircraft is still being told, romanticized (Indiana Jones movies for instance), and have instant recognition this many years later.

A mystery -- in the harbor at Port Vila, Vanuatu (previously the New Hebrides) there is a sunken flying boat. The story they tell there is that this was the last pre-war flight of a Pan Am Clipper coming home after Pearl. On the takeoff run the pilot spotted a native in an outrigger canoe directly in his path, he swerved the plane and avoided the native but tore a hole in the bottom of the plane when he hit a coral head. He managed to beach the plane where the expensive parts - engines, instruments, etc. were removed. The hulk of the plane was then towed out to a deep part of the harbor and sunk.

There is a plane there, I made a SCUBA dive on it. It is a seaplane. At the time I hadn't seen this book and couldn't identify what type. Now I do have the this book, it lists all of the Pan Am planes, and none of them were lost at Port Vila. I wonder what that plane really is.

This book marvelously tells the story of an interesting chapter in the development of aircraft.

This book is a scrapbook of materials related to one of the most romantic and overlooked periods of aviation history. Photos, Pan-Am promotional materials, personal recollections and a variety of other materials are collected into the book. Many of the items are apparently taken from the author's personal collection -- lucky guy. The text is limited and the book really focuses on the imagery, as it should.

The only complaint I have, and it's an extremely minor one, is the red indicator arrows overlaid on some photos to point out an item of interest from the caption. This only occurs on a handful of photos, but almost always, the item in question was readily apparent and didn't need the photo marring red arrows anyway. In my mind, it's akin to drawing a moustache on photos of grandma in the family album.

Kudos to the author, you can feel the passion that was put into every page of this outstanding collection.

Very useful book, especially for beginners. Unlike some of the Japanese origami books, this assumes no prior cultural knowledge, so you can knock off some easy projects quickly, and do some quite complicated ones later. Recommended!

The art of paperfolding has been one of my interests for many years and one I enjoy sharing with my students. This book is a great reference, first of all because the illustrations are very clear and easy to follow. The projects range from simple to somewhat advanced, but none are too difficult to make once you understand the basic folds. My students are always particularly fascinated by the figures that "do things" such as the "Chinese Balloon," which you can blow up and toss around, the "Bird with Flapping Wings," which really seems to fly, and the "Snapping Alligator," which, well, you guessed it. Other paperfolds from this book that never cease to amuse children as well as adults are the "Money Fold Bow Tie," and "Jumping Frog." If you are not sufficiently amazed with your finished paperfold as it is, the author gives additional options and uses for each. Paperfolding is beautiful, magical and tons of fun. This book is a must have if you enjoy the art as much as I do.

This book is amazing! It has many interesting projects to do. Unlike other origami books, this book teaches you easy methods of folding. It doesn't take long for you to become a master at origami and you'll have fun too. Invest in this book soon and you won't regret it.

One of the best books wrote about Love and devotion to family. It gives great insight to the asian culture of doing things from back in the day. Will read this item more then one time. A true classic of the heart and of the spirit.

The story behind the lovely illustration on the cover is engaging and holds one's interest throughout. The novel moves forward through unexpected turns of events. Traditional mores and cultural practices are woven into the story in a natural way, giving the reader a rich picture of the setting in which the events unfold and how the traditional culture affects the behavior of the characters and the limitations which the Chinese culture placed upon them at that time. As the language is simple and the format user-friendly, the reader can become quickly immersed into the colorful life of China several centuries ago.

One of the best piece of classical chinese literature. The story will engross you with its many fascinating characters. As I dug deeper and deeper into the story, I found myself completely immersed in it's storyline, characters, and landscapes - almost if I was somehow a part of the story. This book, by far, has the most fascinating characters. They will move you with their passion, failure, lonliness, jubilation, and gloom. This book truly holds a mythical world of passion and romance. A must read for anyone who hasn't experienced the sensuality of Ming Dynasty romance.