The Misadventures of Zhou Haisheng: Mandarin Companion Graded Readers Breakthrough Level

Breakthrough level

by John Pasden, Jared Turner, Shishuang Chen (Editor)

Zhou Haisheng is a fun-loving and determined young boy whose life revolves around school and his family’s Chinese restaurant. Always well-intentioned, he finds ways to help out his hard-working parents with the family business. Whether it's inventing his own noodle recipe, delivering the wrong order to a customer, or resorting to extremes when a competing noodle shop opens across the street, Zhou Haisheng manages to combine his mischief and wit to save the day.

Mandarin Companion is a series of easy-to-read novels in Chinese that are fun to read and proven to accelerate language learning. Every book in the Mandarin Companion series is carefully written to use characters, words, and grammar that a learner is likely to know.
The Breakthrough Level is written using only 150 unique Chinese characters and is intended for Chinese learners who have obtained a low elementary or novice level of Chinese. Most learners will be able to approach this book after one year of traditional formal study, depending on the learner and program. This level is designed to help learners begin to read full length texts in Chinese and combines simplicity of characters with an easy-to-understand storyline that helps beginners grow their vocabulary and language comprehension abilities.

Genres: China, Fiction

84 pages, Paperback

Published May 28, 2019

Reviews

[Nel]

i finished half of it. very easy for my level so ill move onto a 300w level book.

[Giovana Guiciard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was so happy that I could read this graded reader in Chinese! It was cute and fun and really easy to read.

[Nadine · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first book read in Chinese. It took a while, not because of the difficulty level but it didn’t really sustain my interest. I get the point of 98% familiarity but the repetition got a bit boring. I’ll persevere with a few others and hopefully be able to get through them more rapidly.
The grammar notes per chapter at the end were very helpful.

[G · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first Mandarin Companion book I read, and while it was not the one that caught my interest the most, I received the paperback first among the breakthrough books I ordered. (I'd previously tried to read another one of the books on kindle and ultimately waited until the paperbacks shipped because I like being able to flip pages back and forth easily)

At this point I've been studying Mandarin for ~5 months and probably know 200+ characters, though the ones I know didn't entirely overlap with the 150 characters used, so there were some (<5) I had to look up, and some I knew but embarrassingly enough didn't recognize when they were in a different font. (That's not anything against the font used for the books, my brain is just getting used to the writing)

Still, being able to read a whole book was amazing! Some of the events were very relatable--I'm looking at you, random hotel neighbor in Mexico who accepted the incorrectly delivered room service guacamole I ordered like it was unsolicited manna from heaven--and it was a cute story, though not particularly deep. At times the language is a little repetitive, but this made for easy reading.

[Vicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

My 5th graded reader and the last one I have at the 150-character breakthrough level.

I was putting off this particular story because it didn't look as interesting, but I started it at the same time that I entered another "I will learn how to cook!" phase. I was hoping for more vocabulary on food but everything was either 菜 (a dish) or 面 (noodles). Similar to 小明, this one is also broken out into vignettes.

Looking forward to leveling up to the 300-character series next weekend 😄

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very useful as a simple introduction to reading in Mandarin. The story is not all that interesting, but what do you expect with only 150 characters to work with? Learning the language kept me engaged, and I gained confidence as I worked my way through it. I'm looking forward to trying out other Mandarin readers in this series.

[Otavio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well-made graded reader for a beginner level. Of course the story is nothing spectacular, but telling a story of any significant length with such restricted vocabulary is a major feat in itself. It's a lighthearted story that is easy to follow and where context allows the reader to easily pick up vocabulary and grammar patterns. Well done!

[John Osborne · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's interesting this is currently the highest rated breakthrough level book in the Mandarin Companion series, yet this was my least favorite of the 4 breakthrough level books I've read so far. I'd recommend skipping this one and read the others instead.

[Jaap Grolleman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the best-graded reader from Mandarin Companion (or otherwise). Lots of repetition, which would not be inevitable despite the limited pool of Hanzi characters. Still good practice! Although too easy for HSK4+.

[Jakob · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found it very useful, and although it is not the most engaging story I have read, I still found it interesting. Furthermore, it has enabled me to start reading their 300 character books. Warmly recommended.

[Jing Miao · Rating 5 out of 5]

good story for a 10-year-old

My child has been going to the weekend Chinese school and completed 4th grade. This is the first book in Chinese that he could pretty much read without help, even though I was reading with him. We enjoyed the story together and he felt very proud.

[Deborah · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first book in Chinese!
For 200 or so characters, a fun change from random sentences.
It has three separate stories, so a good one to start with.
(Note: I read the simplified characters version.)
这是一本好书