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Learn to Read Chinese, Book 1: Four Classic Folk Tales in Simplified Chinese, 540 Word Vocabulary, includes Pinyin and English
An orphan girl gets help from a goose. A poor family receives a magical gift. A boy is stranded alone on a ship in a storm. And two magicians perform a deadly trick.Believe it or not, it’s possible for you to read and understand the four wonderful stories in this book even if you start off not knowing a single word of Chinese! We won’t lie to you and say it will be easy, but with time and patience you can certainly do it. Each page of Chinese faces a page of pinyin (phonetic spelling), so if you don’t recognize a word, you can check the pinyin to see how it’s pronounced. You can then look up the word’s meaning in the glossary in the back of the book. A full English translation is also included. You can also listen to a complete audiobook of all four stories, available free on YouTube and downloadable from our website.These stories are written by the best-selling writing team of Jeff Pepper and Xiao Hui Wang, authors of the Journey to the West series of graded readers, translations of Chinese classics including the Dao De Jing, the Art of War, and the San Zi Jing, and lots of other great books. To learn more, visit the Imagin8 Press website.
133 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 19, 2020
8 people are currently reading
7 people want to read
About the author
Jeff Pepper
40 books11 followersI'm a writer and publisher living in Verona Pennsylvania, just outside of Pittsburgh. My company, Imagin8 Press, has published over 100 fiction and nonfiction books for people learning to read Chinese. Our best sellers are an innovative English translation of the Dao De Jing and a 31-volume retelling, in easy Chinese, of the classic novel Journey to the West.
I’m also a lifelong science fiction fan, and started writing sci-fi seriously in 2024. I am delighted that my short story, “Spaceship of Fools,” was accepted by Bewildering Stories. My first full-length sci-fi novel, “Ascent to the Sun,” was published in April 2025.
Before embarking on my current career, I was in the software business. I founded and led three successful companies: ServiceWare, which began in my basement and went public on the NASDAQ; Touchtown, which was acquire by Uniguest; and Tunescribers. I have a degree in computer science from Carnegie-Mellon University, where I taught an undergraduate course in computer programming.
When not sitting in front of a glowing screen, you can probably find me playing competitive pickleball.
I’m also a lifelong science fiction fan, and started writing sci-fi seriously in 2024. I am delighted that my short story, “Spaceship of Fools,” was accepted by Bewildering Stories. My first full-length sci-fi novel, “Ascent to the Sun,” was published in April 2025.
Before embarking on my current career, I was in the software business. I founded and led three successful companies: ServiceWare, which began in my basement and went public on the NASDAQ; Touchtown, which was acquire by Uniguest; and Tunescribers. I have a degree in computer science from Carnegie-Mellon University, where I taught an undergraduate course in computer programming.
When not sitting in front of a glowing screen, you can probably find me playing competitive pickleball.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 28, 2023
Great way to learn more about Chinese history and culture while being able to expand basic character reading skills.
July 6, 2022
This is not a bad collection of short stories, although I feel like the level in this very first book is really too low for it to be that useful for learning, despite the 540 word vocab (which is the equivalent of the "highest" level currently available in the Mandarin Companion series). Still, since my main goal is getting more comfortable reading in Simplified Chinese, this seems to be a pretty good series to go over the most common characters and the vocabulary count does go up with each book.
I do appreciate having the pinyin underneath for each paragraph so it isn't distracting when reading - having pinyin right underneath makes it difficult to focus on just the characters, so having it separate is a very good idea - but still available as a resource if you get temporarily stuck on a new character. It's particularly good for me since I can quickly reference the pinyin if there's a simplified form that I can't recognize because the simplification scheme isn't obvious enough for me to figure out immediately based on context.
The problem is that while two of the stories were pretty interesting (The Golden Beetle and Hulin and the Mad Goose were great), the other two were really boring, especially the last story - The Two Magicians. Even though it's so short, I had a hard time forcing myself to finish it and even after I did, I don't think it even really qualifies as a folk tale.
I do appreciate having the pinyin underneath for each paragraph so it isn't distracting when reading - having pinyin right underneath makes it difficult to focus on just the characters, so having it separate is a very good idea - but still available as a resource if you get temporarily stuck on a new character. It's particularly good for me since I can quickly reference the pinyin if there's a simplified form that I can't recognize because the simplification scheme isn't obvious enough for me to figure out immediately based on context.
The problem is that while two of the stories were pretty interesting (The Golden Beetle and Hulin and the Mad Goose were great), the other two were really boring, especially the last story - The Two Magicians. Even though it's so short, I had a hard time forcing myself to finish it and even after I did, I don't think it even really qualifies as a folk tale.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews