Chinese Breeze - I Really Want to Find Her...

by Jinhai Wen

Chinese Breeze) is a large and innovative Chinese graded reader series which offers over 60 titles of enjoyable stories at eight language levels. It is designed for college and secondary school Chinese language learners from beginning to advanced levels (including AP Chinese students), offering them a new opportunity to read for pleasure and simultaneously developing real fluency, building confidence, and increasing motivation for Chinese learning. 《汉语风》是一套大型中文分级泛读系列丛书。这套丛书以“学习者通过轻松、广泛的阅读提高语言的熟练程度，培养语感，增强对中文的兴趣和学习自信心”为基本理念，根据难度分为8个等级，每一级8—10 册，共60 余册，每册8,000 至30,000 字。丛书的读者对象为中文水平从初级（大致掌握300个常用词）一直到高级（掌握3,000—4,500个常用词）的大学生和中学生（包括修美国AP课程的学生），以及其他中文学习者。

Genres: China

57 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2007

Reviews

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was rather silly and repetitive. They definitely did not do as good of a job telling an interesting story within the 300-character limit as Mandarin Companion did with "The Secret Garden." So far, though, I have enjoyed the 500-character Chinese Breeze books that I've read.

[Liam Richards · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first Chinese novel. I get the authors were restricted to using basic vocabulary but this was a weeeeeird story. About halfway through the sentences felt very repetitive. Overall good refresher on grammar and basic vocabulary, though.

[Danielle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've read two Chinese Breeze beginner level books so far, and at this point I prefer the other 错，错，错 to this one. This book was easy to read (yay), but the plot was lacking. Three young men go to China to find a girl. Why? Because their professor gave them her picture and asked them to find her before he died because her work has meaning. The real reason why? Because she's very pretty and each one wants her to be his girlfriend. This reason gets repeated probably over a dozen times in the book. The friends? Not that great of friends. The ending? Super silly, but with some level of satisfaction for the reader.

I have found that these books definitely have helped me on a speaking level for Chinese. I find the repetitive grammar structure and vocabulary really useful to that end. I would recommend that others read the Chinese Breeze series of books...but maybe not this one in particular.

[Willy · Rating 1 out of 5]

My first Chinese novel ever. So it's a bit of a landmark for me.
The story itself however, is rather simple. Halfway the novel it was already quite clear how it would end. But of course, a more complicated plot would probably have lost me.

[Nancy Lewis · Rating 2 out of 5]

It feels good to be able to read a *whole* book in Chinese. However, this one is repetitive and juvenile. Three guys travel to China because they think the mystery girl in the picture is hot? Seriously? I guess you can only do so much with 300 characters.

[Wendy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too easy for my level but at least that might encourage me to pick up a harder one. Ridiculous story though. No westerner would ever believe it.

[Jennifer Bakody]

So the joy of this book is that it exists for Chinese learners, of which I am one. And I’d love to find a series like this in other languages such as Swahili or Spanish or Bahasa. This particular story was very simple and less enjoyable to me for it. But all credit to the authors for coming up with a narrative using only 300 characters, more or less. Thank you, sincerely. I liked this book enough that I have sought out more titles in the series, including ones at a higher level, which should allow for more nuance in characters and plot. In truth I was a bit lazy reading this, as I do know far more than 300 Chinese words. (Just wanted to start at Level 1 to build up my confidence).