This has some nice simple short stories, with an MP3 with clear native speakers, written in Hanzi and Pinyin, with a (somewhat flimsy) card to cover up the Pinyin. The stories are nice and seem typical of China during the immediate post-Mao and early Deng Xiaoping era, so they seem quaint today. The writing style is direct with lots of repetition. An incomplete vocabulary list is at the back, and unusual phrases are explained in marginal notes, so a low-intermediate student can pretty much read right through. Only about 1000 characters are used, so the level is low-intermediate. The book is light and medium size, easy to carry (but not pocket size)....

This is an intermediate/advanced reader on China's history.
This book is part of a series, the others are: 'Common Knowledge About Chinese Geography' and 'Common Knowledge about Chinese Culture'. Together all three books will cover essential knowledge about China.

The chapters are as follows (my own edit of the content):
1. Ancient history (the "Peking Man", Confucious,...)
2. the Qin and Han Dynasties (the Great Wall, the First Emperor,...)
3. the Division of China (the Red Cliff battle, the Ballad of Mulan,...)
4. the Sui and Tang Dynasties (the Grand Canal, the Great Poets,...)
5. the Five Dynasties (Bao, Genghis Khan, Marco Polo in China,...)
6. the Ming and Ching Dynasties (Zheng He's voyages, Japanese pirates,...)
7. Modern China (the Opium Wars, May 4th Movement, the Nanchang Uprising, the Nanjing Massacre,...)
8. Contemporary China (Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Hong Kong handover,...)

The book tries to cover as much as possible, so do not expect in-depth coverage. It is intended as a core introduction only. In this volume you will read about all sorts of historical events: science, literature, wars, philosophy, and so on. It reflects the cultural history of China.
The dialogues in simplified Chinese are written on the left page, the English translation on the right.

There is no glossary listing for each reading and no vocabulary index so you may need a good dictionary at hand, just in case.
It does however list unusual words that you most likely have not come across in your textbooks, it also has boxes with extra information.

There are no exercises in the book, just readings.

All the books in the series are visually very attractive - there are coloured images and photographs on almost every page, and the layout is excellent. In this volume you get pictures and illustrations of architecture, historical characters, archeological tools, old manuscripts, poems, and so on. I really like all the visual information.

This is a high-quality and high-standard book. I highly recommend the whole series....

I love this book and its predecessor, book I. This book, which deals with simplified characters, introduces you to plenty of new characters in each chapter, contextualized in a reading passage, which does not use pinyin. This is followed by detailed explanation of the new words, with definitions and phrases containing those words. Then the individual characters are highlighted, with examples of how they combine with other characters to form words. Also, where a complex version of the character exists, a visual comparison is made between the simplified and complex forms. After this there is a "Snowball" section with extra exposure to the characters and characters from previous chapters. There is a nice mini-dictionary at the back of the book.

In book I, 400 characters were introduced. Book II builds upon this, introducing an additional "500 of the most frequently used characters...in a wider context of about 4000 words formed with them", as the back of the book states.

I find this book to be thoughtfully designed and well-organized and highly accessible for people that want to study on their own at their own pace. I didn't find anything that came close to it for my purposes, which is why I ordered it from abroad since no bookstores in North America carry it anymore, which is a shame....

We used this book in our listening class at school. It is a good basic listening book.

The Ceremony lived up to all the expectations, with a display of performing Arts, Lights & Fireworks equal to anything that I've seen in the past....

Excellent book for learning Chinese. Easy to understand. Book was shipped very fast :)

Zwei ausgesprochen nette Lehrbücher, die unkonventionelle Kapitel haben. Empfehlenswert zur Wiederholung chinesischer Sprachkenntnisse.Gut w?re es, wenn es demn?chst(?) begleitende CDs g?be....

Works well in a classroom sitation where you have a native speaker teaching/leading the class. The book was originally written in French, then translated to the English....

It's really a nice book, especially helpful for the people who are interested about the Qing Dynasty. Nice book!...

An excellent work..keep up the good job...your efforts shall help the leaarners in the long way.