Chinese Stories for Language Learners: Elementary (Free Audio) - Bilingual book of folktales, idioms, fables, proverbs, myths and modern fun stories (Chinese Story Series) Paperback – 6 Nov. 2022

I have been learning Mandarin Chinese for a couple of years now, and have amassed quite a collection of simple reading texts for a Chinese learner - there are plenty to choose from. This is by far the best I have come across, both in terms of subject matter, content and layout. Reading Chinese myths and stories behind famous proverbs plunges you straight into Chinese culture and is incredibly satisfying. The layout is brilliant - first, the text in hanzi with interlinear pinyin and English translation, with new vocabulary highlighted in bold. Then, a proverb (chengyu) related to the story, followed by Culture Corner explaining its context and customs. Then a question to get you thinking, with a few options to discuss. Finally, a vocab list, a bit of grammar in the form of sentence patterns, and the complete text repeated just in hanzi, brilliant for testing yourself. It has online audio files as well. Just a perfect combination of literature and language.Level-wise, I'd say the Elementary book is ideal for people on HSK2 level, working towards HSK3. I got the other books in the series too - the Intermediate stories and the Art of War - and look forward to progressing to those. LingLing did a brilliant job, and I hope the series will grow.

Very happy with this story book, beautifully designed, concise and easy to follow! The stories touch many aspects across ancient and modern China, many stories are famous Chinese classics with folktales, myths, well-known Chinese idioms and proverbs, as well as modern stories which are very entertaining to read! All keywords and sentence patterns are not only highlighted, but summarised at the end of each story. All stories come with bilingual versions with pinyin, Chinese, English and Chinese-only versions, plus culture notes, key vocabulary lists, sentence patterns, which make it easy to learn and review. This is a great method to learn Chinese language and culture! The audio files can be downloaded, and are also available on a YouTube playlist, the recordings are done by native speakers too, really useful to help to practice Chinese listening and speaking. I also like the graphic images of these stories! This is such a great Chinese story book that I have been waiting for a long time!

This is a wonderful book, full of great stories of different genres. Each story has several grammatical key points clearly explained and there is also a full vocabulary list. There are also character-with-pinyin texts as well as character only versions of the text. There are also plenty of sections on chinese culture for each story, which provide great context. This is such good value. I can thoroughly recommend this.

The book contains 25 short stories with the additional Pinyin and English in the main text. All the stories have been written to use modern Chinese that is currently in everyday usage. Each story also contains "Culture Corner" explaining some cultural background aspects, plus the key vocabulary, and also key sentence patterns. Lastly there is the Hanzi Chinese Character only version of the story if you really want to test yourself. Comes with free audio which is spoken by native Chinese speakers, the pace is aimed for elementary speakers and is very clear and easy to understand. I highly recommend this book, it is a really useful self-contained study aid with additional learning tips, all the stories are interesting and use modern text.

The book is well laid out with both parallel text (with hanzi, pinyin and English translation) and pure hanzi versions of each story. There is also an explanation (in English!) of the part the story plays in wider Chinese culture - useful perhaps for developing a more idiomatic Chinese when speaking.The style of the stories is close to Aesop's Fables in the West - though they are all authentically Chinese. So it is probably not going to be directly useful for developing conversational Chinese. But it's still a great resource for both children and adults learning Chinese and wanting to get more sense of the culture and folklore as well as the language itself.

Good product

This book is exactly what I needed to learn words in context. There's also audio to go with it. I especially liked there's a Chinese only part where you can see how much you can decipher without pinyin.

Well thought out - the stories are not too long and engaging enough to provide meaningful context for learning and practice. Probably the best resource I’ve found.