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Chinese Short Stories For Beginners: 20 Captivating Short Stories to Learn Chinese & Grow Your Vocabulary the Fun Way!
So, you’ve decided to learn Chinese. Now what?
One of the toughest languages to learn, it’s never been easy to find reading material in Chinese… However, we’ve created a book that will change all of that.
Language learning isn’t just about lessons or practice – it’s about consistency. You may have found the best teacher in town or the most incredible learning app around, but if you don’t put all of that knowledge to practice, you’ll soon forget everything you’ve obtained. This is why being engaged with interesting reading material can be so essential for somebody wishing to learn a new language.
Therefore, in this book we have compiled 20 easy-to-read, compelling and fun stories that will allow you to expand your vocabulary and give you the tools to improve your grasp of the wonderful Chinese (Mandarin) tongue.
How Chinese Short Stories For Beginners
Each chapter possesses a funny, interesting and/or thought-provoking story based on real-life situations, allowing you to learn a bit more about the Chinese culture.Having trouble understanding Chinese characters? No problem – apart from the English translation below each paragraph, we’ve also provided you with the Pinyin romanization of the Chinese language, so that you never have trouble reading Chinese again!The summaries follow a synopsis in Chinese and in English of what you just read, both to review the lesson and for you to see if you understood what the tale was about. Use them if you’re having trouble.At the end of those summaries, you’ll be provided with a list of the most relevant vocabulary involved in the lesson, as well as slang and sayings that you may not have understood at first glance! Again, Pinyin romanization is included to make things super easy for you!Finally, you’ll be provided with a set of tricky questions in Chinese, allowing you the chance to prove that you learned something in the story. Whether it’s true or false, or if you’re doing the single answer questions, don’t worry if you don’t know the answer to any — we will provide them immediately after, but no cheating!We want you to feel comfortable while learning the tongue; after all, no language should be a barrier for you to travel around the world and expand your social circles!
So look no further! Pick up your copy of Chinese Short Stories for Beginners and level up your Chinese, right now!
One of the toughest languages to learn, it’s never been easy to find reading material in Chinese… However, we’ve created a book that will change all of that.
Language learning isn’t just about lessons or practice – it’s about consistency. You may have found the best teacher in town or the most incredible learning app around, but if you don’t put all of that knowledge to practice, you’ll soon forget everything you’ve obtained. This is why being engaged with interesting reading material can be so essential for somebody wishing to learn a new language.
Therefore, in this book we have compiled 20 easy-to-read, compelling and fun stories that will allow you to expand your vocabulary and give you the tools to improve your grasp of the wonderful Chinese (Mandarin) tongue.
How Chinese Short Stories For Beginners
Each chapter possesses a funny, interesting and/or thought-provoking story based on real-life situations, allowing you to learn a bit more about the Chinese culture.Having trouble understanding Chinese characters? No problem – apart from the English translation below each paragraph, we’ve also provided you with the Pinyin romanization of the Chinese language, so that you never have trouble reading Chinese again!The summaries follow a synopsis in Chinese and in English of what you just read, both to review the lesson and for you to see if you understood what the tale was about. Use them if you’re having trouble.At the end of those summaries, you’ll be provided with a list of the most relevant vocabulary involved in the lesson, as well as slang and sayings that you may not have understood at first glance! Again, Pinyin romanization is included to make things super easy for you!Finally, you’ll be provided with a set of tricky questions in Chinese, allowing you the chance to prove that you learned something in the story. Whether it’s true or false, or if you’re doing the single answer questions, don’t worry if you don’t know the answer to any — we will provide them immediately after, but no cheating!We want you to feel comfortable while learning the tongue; after all, no language should be a barrier for you to travel around the world and expand your social circles!
So look no further! Pick up your copy of Chinese Short Stories for Beginners and level up your Chinese, right now!
159 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 21, 2020
301 people are currently reading
151 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
September 23, 2024
Some may wonder what possessed me to attempt the language of Mandarin. Well, there is of course this notion that it is supposed to be a very difficult language and judging from previous efforts with languages perhaps an impossible task at that. The imagined difficulty grabbed me. I love playing the asian game of Go, (Japanese name; also called Badduk in Korea, Wei Chi in China), as well as having taken a class on Chinese Government in college. Amy Tan's novels have been enjoyable as well as the Inspector Chen novels. And of course, Pulitzer Prize winning Pearl Buck's novels All this allows me to journey to China at least in my imagination - a section of the world so few of us know about.
Also, in the Fall of 2025 we are currently planning to visit De Hong, China to see my daughter-in-laws parents. it will be such a short time spent there - so it really doesn't justify the effort to learn the language. I guess I just want to do it, for its own sake.
Full disclosure: I did not follow every, or even most of the Chinese characters which I read in these short stories. In fact, in the introduction they encourage you to not feel the necessity to do so. I did painstakingly follow most of the pinyin pronunciation character for character. This involved looking from one paragraph to another. There was never a time when I couldn't pick out at least one, two, three or more characters in a paragraph - which was extremely satisfying.
These short stories also cover a variety of interesting aspects of Chinese Culture among which are a history of chopsticks (Kuài Zi), the origin of Spring Festival (chūn jié), an interesting story about Kitchen God (Zào wáng yé, fans of Amy Tan would be interested in that one, China's predating us in the technology of printing yìn shuā shù, Yīn and Yáng in Chinese medicine, as well as a short history on the importance of Chinese kites Fēng zhēng.
Forty days ago, about the time I'd completed all the duolingo units it occurred to me that if I really wanted to get a solid grasp of Mandarin characters; I would need to be able to actually write them. So for thirty minutes each day I practice writing the characters; and attempt to learn a new one each day. As of this morning I was able to successfully regurgitate on paper 48 of the characters. I was especially delighted to learn the character for tea, as well as yin and yang. Those characters are not in the books I'm using for character practice. 'Chinese 366: One character per day, One proverb per week' is my primary book for learning the characters. Written by Gerd Schmid Ph.D. Not paying much attention to learning the proverbs - as there are characters not in the vocabulary and frankly it's a bit overwhelming just trying to get one character a day. My second book for learning characters is 'Mandarin Characters Made Easy: An Easy Step-by-Step Approach to Learn Chinese Characters.
I plan on making a second pass at the 'Chinese Short Stories', and actually have an audio version of the book. This time I should be able to actually get a firmer sense of each character and the role it plays in the overall grammar of the story. My discipline with this will be fifteen minutes a day. I'm counting '20 Short Stories' as completed - only in the sense that I've gone through each story and answered the questions at the end of each story. In the words of one of Garrison Keilor's stories; "I know a little bit more about it than I did before."
Received 'Chinese Short Stories for Beginners' as a Christmas Present after spending a number of months working through the Duolingo class units. This past summer I really buckled down on reading this volume. This would have been about the time I'd finished all the units of duolingo. Duolingo mandarin review continues to be part of my practice - and the program is nice enough to keep track of the places where I am weak. This combined with the work on Chinese Short Stories and learning characters is helping to compliment the overall comprehension of the material. Wish me luck in this future endeavor.
Also, in the Fall of 2025 we are currently planning to visit De Hong, China to see my daughter-in-laws parents. it will be such a short time spent there - so it really doesn't justify the effort to learn the language. I guess I just want to do it, for its own sake.
Full disclosure: I did not follow every, or even most of the Chinese characters which I read in these short stories. In fact, in the introduction they encourage you to not feel the necessity to do so. I did painstakingly follow most of the pinyin pronunciation character for character. This involved looking from one paragraph to another. There was never a time when I couldn't pick out at least one, two, three or more characters in a paragraph - which was extremely satisfying.
These short stories also cover a variety of interesting aspects of Chinese Culture among which are a history of chopsticks (Kuài Zi), the origin of Spring Festival (chūn jié), an interesting story about Kitchen God (Zào wáng yé, fans of Amy Tan would be interested in that one, China's predating us in the technology of printing yìn shuā shù, Yīn and Yáng in Chinese medicine, as well as a short history on the importance of Chinese kites Fēng zhēng.
Forty days ago, about the time I'd completed all the duolingo units it occurred to me that if I really wanted to get a solid grasp of Mandarin characters; I would need to be able to actually write them. So for thirty minutes each day I practice writing the characters; and attempt to learn a new one each day. As of this morning I was able to successfully regurgitate on paper 48 of the characters. I was especially delighted to learn the character for tea, as well as yin and yang. Those characters are not in the books I'm using for character practice. 'Chinese 366: One character per day, One proverb per week' is my primary book for learning the characters. Written by Gerd Schmid Ph.D. Not paying much attention to learning the proverbs - as there are characters not in the vocabulary and frankly it's a bit overwhelming just trying to get one character a day. My second book for learning characters is 'Mandarin Characters Made Easy: An Easy Step-by-Step Approach to Learn Chinese Characters.
I plan on making a second pass at the 'Chinese Short Stories', and actually have an audio version of the book. This time I should be able to actually get a firmer sense of each character and the role it plays in the overall grammar of the story. My discipline with this will be fifteen minutes a day. I'm counting '20 Short Stories' as completed - only in the sense that I've gone through each story and answered the questions at the end of each story. In the words of one of Garrison Keilor's stories; "I know a little bit more about it than I did before."
Received 'Chinese Short Stories for Beginners' as a Christmas Present after spending a number of months working through the Duolingo class units. This past summer I really buckled down on reading this volume. This would have been about the time I'd finished all the units of duolingo. Duolingo mandarin review continues to be part of my practice - and the program is nice enough to keep track of the places where I am weak. This combined with the work on Chinese Short Stories and learning characters is helping to compliment the overall comprehension of the material. Wish me luck in this future endeavor.
February 21, 2020
Lingo Mastery has a "2000 Most Common Chinese Words in Context" book and this is an excellent resource building off of that. The first book on words in context it a great way to learn sentence structure through examples. This book, on stories, helps me see the connections between sentences and helps me improve my delivery of sentences. Getting to the point where I can speak multiple sentences back-to-back with smooth delivery is extremely rewarding!
Overall, this is an excellent learning resource that is very approachable. The book also includes a great introduction with some learning tips. If you can understand 75% of this book you should be able to have basic conversations in Mandarin!
Overall, this is an excellent learning resource that is very approachable. The book also includes a great introduction with some learning tips. If you can understand 75% of this book you should be able to have basic conversations in Mandarin!
December 31, 2022
I'm trying to learn Mandarin Chinese and bought this book on Kindle to see if I could progress. I read the stories in English, but haven't completed the Chinese versions. They are simply fun little stories that share the types of information that make learning fun. Looking forward to continuing to use the book as a way to continue learning the language.
Wish there were an audio portion to the book. Would help a great deal!
Wish there were an audio portion to the book. Would help a great deal!
February 26, 2020
This is a really helpful and interesting collection of stories that provides and English translation and pinyin for pronunciation help. A separate vocabulary list is provided for each story to help prepare before reading and for review afterwards.
I found this method of learning by reading to be very helpful when learning Chinese!
I found this method of learning by reading to be very helpful when learning Chinese!
February 3, 2020
I love languages and Chinese, though very new and basic for me, is among one that I am determined to learn. This book is a great help as it has stories that have been helping me learn new words. I love it.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
February 22, 2020
A very useful handbook for Chinese learners. Helps to form a solid vocabulary and develop speaking skills as well. Also, the book is easy and fun to read, you will definitely not get bored with this ❤️
June 28, 2021
This book was great for practice and some knowledge of culture. I will be rereading it for practice. It's really convenient to have the pinyin and english translation all in one spot to help the earnest reader practice without all the pain of looking up words all the time.
October 9, 2022
Awesome book filled with fascinating tales of Chinese traditions. I greatly enjoyed the Mandarin characters, paired with Pinyin & English for each paragraph :D
December 20, 2024
这本小故事的书的水平，并不是初级的。
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews