Chinese Breeze Graded Reader Series Level 4 (1100-Word Level): Beauty and Grace

by Yuehua Liu

Chinese Breeze is an innovative Chinese graded reader series which offers over 60 titles of enjoyable stories at eight language levels. It is designed for secondary school and college Chinese language learners from beginner to advanced levels, offering them an opportunity to read for pleasure and simultaneously developing real fluency, building confidence and increasing motivation for Chinese learning. Each text offers an interesting fictional story, accompanying illustrations and vocabulary and comprehension exercises, a variety of activities to stimulate students' interaction with the text and answer keys to help check for detailed and global understanding.

Genres: China

110 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2018

Reviews

[Ibolya · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was boring.

[Rob Hocking · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title of this Chinese graded reader is translated into English as "Beauty and Grace", but this translation doesn't really capture what the title is about. The title is literally "Fish sink, geese fall", but to understand this, you need to know that it is a reference to story in Chinese folklore about a woman who is so beautiful that she causes the fish to forget to swim and sink the bottom of the river, and the geese to forget to fly and fall out of the sky. Chinese is full of references like this - called 成語 or "four character idioms", and to be able to really understand the language at a high level you need to know them.

The title of the book is also a reference to two characters in the story - a woman named 春雁 and another woman nicknamed 沉魚, both of whom the main character falls in love with and who also fall in love with him. I enjoyed this book more than most of the Chinese readers I've read recently. The story was more compelling, and I enjoyed the many references too and explanations of 成語 sprinkled throughout.

[Tofu Meow · Rating 2 out of 5]

Chinese Breeze is the best medicine for insomnia.

I'm glad they stop writing this series, as my personality compels me to read them all, but holy god they are boring.