Books in the Far Eastern Publications Series series

This dictionary is specially designed to help students understand, appreciate and remember Chinese characters. It has the following features: Each character entry includes a brief etymology explaining the character's composition according to traditional Chinese research.Genealogical charts highlight the connections between characters, showing the creation of more than 4,000 characters from less than 200 simple pictographs and ideographs. Based on computerized referencing of the classic dictionary written nearly 2,000 years ago, these charts generalize and systematize the radical system by allowing a character to be found by any component, whether phonetic or semantic. For continuity, a traditional radical index is also included.Mandarin standards in China and Taiwan are distinguished.Simplified forms for each character are given.Character entries list all words which use the character in any position, allowing a word to be found even if the first character is unknown.English definitions are referenced in an English-Chinese index.A word pronunciation index allows students to directly search for an overheard word without having to guess the word's initial character.A stroke count index and a traditional radical index are included.

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.

One of the most famous episodes from Water Margin, a traditional Chinese novel, is here retold in simple Chinese. This text is the fifth volume designed to supplement the Intermediate Chinese Reader by John DeFrancis. It is presented in simplified characters, with pinyin romanization, and an accompanying audio program is available.