Xiaoniu 小妞

After reading a Sinosplice post named “The Bookshelf Problem” I started to think I had the same problem (endlessly searching for the right book) in the past, but not anymore; I was able to stop myself, however, the damage was already done. Everything you see here was bought over a five year period.

If you look closely you’ll see the the books run the gamete from cheesy “Teach Yourself Chinese” to a real 美中 dictionary and some old traditional Chinese school books (I believe from Taiwan).

I started out with the three John DeFrancis books (in the middle of the picture) and enjoyed them thoroughly until the day I showed Sue what I was learning and she kept pointing out that some of the words are simply not used anymore. I continue to use these books today, but I’m a little more discerning of which new words I choose to use.

A couple years ago while on our honeymoon we were able to spend some time shopping on Nanjing Lu and ended up in a big bookstore (新华书店). It was my  one chance to stock up on good books for learning; a higher class of books than what is generally available at Barnes and Noble. My favorite is the 美中 dictionary. That one has come in handy on numerous occasions. If I can’t find a word in my other dictionaries that one usually has what I’m looking for.

Besides some old traditional Chinese character school books (which are excellent learning tools!) my other favorite Chinese learning tool is the “kids” section in the 世界日报 (World Journal) newspaper. The WJ is a Taiwanese paper and every day there is a half page section with various school child reading level text.

More often than not the text is accompanied with pinyin, but every so often they print zhuyin fuhao (注音符号). Since my father in law gets the 2-3 papers a week I get 2-3 of these a week. Right now I’m not at a high enough level to read many of them without looking up every other word. I usually choose one and make my way through it learning the words as I go. Sometimes I’ll get one (like tonight) that I can read and understand without looking up any of the words, which feels good.

So, other than clipping from the newspaper I keep my Chinese literature collecting under control. I’ve started the learning part of the journey.