Books by Fred Fang-yu Wang

In this useful volume, Fred Fang-yu Wang presents materials designed to help solve an often vexing problem for students of Chinese: how to recognize and write handwritten or cursive-style forms of Chinese characters. Such forms are not usually taught in the regular language programs in schools and colleges. Yet they are constantly used by Chinese in informal communications, notes, letters, manuscripts, diaries, and the like. In fact, Chinese seldom write anything in printed-form characters, since cursive forms are generally employed for daily use. Such forms are as frequently seen in Chinese culture as the handwritten forms seen daily in the Western environment. A person unfamilar with the cursive forms will usually find it difficult to read handwritten Chinese despite a thorough knowledge of the printed form. Thus the value of this book. This book teaches students to recognize the cursive versions of 300 basic, frequently-used characters in Chinese, radical by radical. In doing so, it fills a crucial gap in the bridge between academic learning and real-life competence.

Written in the style of a Chinese folktale, this book presents the story of "The Lady in the Painting" with vocabulary and structures familiar to students who have completed a basic course in Chinese. It uses an inventory of only about 300 Chinese characters, serving as a smooth transition between the short and long reading passages.