Doubting to shuō

The Far East Chinese-English Dictionary (遠東漢英大辭典) is widely sold both in the west and in traditional character using Chinese regions, such as Taiwan and Hong Kong. While its primary market is Chinese people who are studying English, this dictionary is also very useful for English speakers who are studying Chinese. In fact, many prestigious US colleges use this dictionary along with the Oxford Concise E-C/C-E dictionary for their intermediate level courses.

The dictionary is organized by radical and stroke count, and all characters are indexed by both zhùyīn and pīnyīn at the back of the dictionary. More common terms are highlighted in pink. With over 120,000 entries on 7,331 Chinese characters, the dictionary is very thorough. Obviously, it isn’t impossible to include everything, but in my experience the dictionary has more than fulfilled its stated goal of emphasizing wide application and current usage. From literary terms to scientific terms to idioms and even vulgar slang, I have never encountered a commonly used word that I haven’t been able to find in this dictionary.

Pros:

• Accurate translations and clear explanations
• Nearly any commonly used speech can be found
• Radical, stroke number, zhùyīn and pīnyīn can all be used to find words
• Fairly durable

Cons:

• Though characters are indexed by pīnyīn in the back only zhùyīn is listed next to the entries under any given character
• No simplified characters are included at all
• The characters are too small for students to be able to tell how to write them
• Except for literary terms, the usage for words in this dictionary is very Taiwan-centric, yet the pronunciation suggest for characters is often unused in Taiwan, except by mainland immigrants

Rating: 4.5/5
Level: Beginner to High Intermediate

Integrated Chinese 1 (中文聽說讀寫一) is by far the most used introductory Chinese textbook at US colleges. In fact, it was with this book that I began my studies of Chinese as a college freshman. According to the preface, Integrated Chinese uses a modern communicative approach. The book covers about 800 characters, not counting supplementary vocabulary, and is meant to be used for one college school year in a five hour per week class. I’ve never seen the book sold in Asia.

Like most Chinese textbooks, each lesson of Integrated Chinese 1 includes a Chinese dialogue, the same dialogue repeated in pinyin and then English, a vocabulary list, and a grammar section. In my opinion, the approach really isn’t that communicative. It’s just as focused on grammar and translation as any of the old school Chinese texts, such as the Practical Audio-Visual Chinese (視聽華語) series. It certainly isn’t as communicative as the modern Japanese textbooks, such as the Yookoso series. Integrated Chinese is extremely well laid out, though. The dialogues really are useful as spring-boards into class discussion. I think this is the one place where the communicative intent of the authors comes through.

Integrated Chinese 1 is accompanied by a workbook, a character workbook, and CDs with workbook exercises. Both simplified and traditional character versions are available. I found the workbooks to be difficult, but extremely helpful. The workbook CDs are absolutely the best I’ve ever used in any language program. For that matter, I can’t think of a single better workbook for any language course. Maybe the most telling thing is the comparison I saw the first time I left Taiwan to visit home. I met up with some friends studying Chinese in college with the Integrated Chinese series. In 9 months of attending class for 1 hour a day, they knew more characters and had better pronunciation than my friends at Shida (師範大學), who had been living in Taiwan and using the Audio-Visual series for 2 hours of class a day over just as many months. Nearly all of them credited the listening homework sections in the workbook.

I can’t emphasize enough how every thing in Integrated Chinese 1 is useful once you get to China. If you go to Taiwan, like I did, you’ll find a few word usages are different but you’ll still be well understood. Unfortunately, at times the book seems more like it was written for linguists than for 18 year old college students. The phonics section at the beginning was particularly intimidating. I remember that it described the pinyin “x” sound as an “alveolo-palatal fricative”. I had to look up each word in the dictionary to figure out what that meant. On the other hand, the book was very precise and I did figure it out, unlike many people I’ve met who have studied for years and still don’t differentiate their “x” and “sh” sounds very well. The grammar explanations are dry, but thorough. One final thing I’d like to say about Integrated Chinese 1 is that it is NOT an easy textbook work through in the time frame allotted by most colleges. If you work through it in one year in a 5-credit class, I guarantee you’ll be spending at least a couple of hours a day on your homework.

Pros:

• Very accurate grammar explanations
• Excellent workbook and workbook CDs
• Good dialogue topics
• Gives students a good foundation for further study
• Very widely used

Cons:

• Makes for a very difficult one year course
• Explanations are sometimes overly technical
• The traditional character fonts aren’t very good; complex characters look like ink-blots
• The teaching method is not as modern as the authors claim it to be

Rating: 4/5
Level: Absolute Beginner

UC Berkley has some multimedia excercises for Integrated Chinese.

Background
Far East Everyday Chinese 1 (遠東生活華語一) is the second most commonly used introductory textbook in Taiwan. While the Practical Audio-Visual Chinese series has been the undisputed leader amongst textbooks in language schools across Taiwan for the past decade, the Far East series has been steadily making inroads ever since being published in 2001. A few schools such as Gaoxiong Shida (高雄師大) favor the newer series. At the time of this writing, even Taiwan Shida (臺灣師大), the school that publishes the Practical Audio-Visual series, offers classes that make use of the Far East series. Most other schools have followed suit and started offering a few Far East classes as well. Interestingly enough, the author of Far East Everyday Chinese 1 is none other than Yeh Teh-ming (葉德明), the former director of Taiwan Shida’s language program in the 90′s. Also, of note is that while few American colleges use this book, it is available in many Chinatowns across the states, as well as other Chinatowns in Vancouver and Sydney.

Overview
This book was written with the goal of making a book for a classroom focused on communicative, rather than audio-lingual or translation teaching. This is readily apparent from the very beginning. In stark contrast with every other beginning Chinese language textbook I’ve seen, the first dialogue in this book is NOT 你好. It’s 多少錢. The first chapter in the book teaches students how to ask how much things cost and how to order basic foods sold at local shops, while the second deals with going to traditional markets. In short it gives students the tools to handle their very first and most common communicative needs upon moving to a Chinese speaking environment, or even visiting a Chinatown. I can’t even begin to tell you how much more useful this is for an absolute beginner than the chapter one dialogues dealing with introductions and professions that appear in most Chinese books are. Unfortunately, the book is decidedly on the thin side for an introductory text. With only twelve chapters, and only about 30-40 new words per chapter, it just isn’t enough material for a full first year at most universities.

Besides a text book, there are also a workbook, a character workbook, CDs for the textbook and a CD for the workbook. The CDs to be excellent. The textbook CDs are clear and slow, but not overly so. The workbook CD is also very useful. Unlike the Practical Audio-Visual Series which includes no listening homework, the Far East series includes listening comprehension drills in every chapter of the workbook. This listening homework is vital because without it, many beginning students get stuck and don’t develop enough listening skills to feel comfortable enough to start engaging in conversations. The textbook, workbook, and character workbook are available in both simplified and traditional character versions. The textbooks of each version also include characters of the other type in the the glossary and dialogue appendix. The covers of all of the books are flimsy and quickly destroyed in backpacks.

Pros:

• Communicative introduction to Mandarin that teaches the most useful things first
• Extremely well suited to students living in a Chinese environment
• Very useful for students who have access to China towns
• A full CD of listening comprehension drills
• Relatively widely used
• Colorful and interesting text

Cons:

• Not enough material for a full year college course
• Grammar is introduced only when necessary for a communicative goal; many students feel that its introduction is haphazard
• Even in the traditional character version, no zhù yīn is used
• Flimsy covers

Rating: 4/5
Level: Absolute Beginner

How many coincidences can you accept in a story? If coincidences ARE the story, is there a limit to how many you can stomach? If the answer is yes, this movie is not for you. If you can accept the implausible though, 向左走向右走 has quite a bit to offer. The music, the poetry and the scenery are beautiful. Half-Japanese heart-throb Takeshi Kaneshiro (金城武) and Hong Kong star Gigi Leung (梁詠琪), who starred together in the hit romantic film Tempting Heart (1999), are reunited for another love story. Much of the movie was carried on the strength of these two, who are able to make even the most improbable of plots beleivable. The supporting cast also did a great job adding comic relief to what would otherwise be a serious movie.

The story of this movie revolves around a musician (Takeshi), and a translator (Leung). When they meet, sparks fly, but it seems that they are fated to always be just out of each other’s reach. They are neighbors but don’t realize it. They unknowingly order food from the same restaurant, stay at the same hospital, ride the same subway trains, and even dial the same numbers, all while desperately searching for each other. Unfortunately, whatever they do, they are always just out of contact with each other. When one turns left, the other turns right.

向左走向右走 is surprisingly touching. I found myself really caring about what happened to these two characters, despite the obvious nature and down-right corniness of the plot. That said, there is a certain beauty to how much symmetry is in the story. Not only are the two main characters moving as if reflections (or in their words, “shadows”) of each other, but there is a similar kind of symmetry between the supporting characters who interact with them. The film is also worth quite a few more laughs than I expected. In terms of difficulty for a Chinese student, I think this is one of the easier films out there. I would guess that a typical student who has completed level 4 at Shida (師大), or three years Chinese in college would understand most of the movie. Even if you don’t want English subtitles for most of the movie, I still recommend getting the DVD, though. There’s a Polish poem in the movie, and you’ll want English subtitles for that. I say, if you’re studying Chinese, rent it. If not, rent it anyway.

Rating: 4.5/5

How could a review of Chinese textbooks start with anything else? For better or worse, Practical Audio-Visual Chinese (視聽華語) is the de facto standard Chinese textbook in Taiwan. Shida (師範大學) uses it. 文化大學 uses it. Taida (臺灣大學) uses it. Nearly every major Mandarin language school on the island uses this book. Unless you study at TLI, there is a very strong chance that you’ll encounter this book. Perhaps the best feature of this book is that almost every experienced Mandarin as a foreign language instructor on the island is familiar with it. Not only that, but quite a few intermediate materials have been specifically designed for students who have studied through the first two books of this series.

The question everybody emails me is this: is Practical Audio-Visual Chinese okay? The answer is yes. It’s “okay”. There’s nothing exceptionally good about this book, but it doesn’t have any glaring flaws either. It includes both zhuyin (注音) and standard 拼音. It has supporting CDs, VCDs, and a workbook. This book takes a very methodical approach. Each lesson starts with a reading or dialogue, followed by vocabulary words, and grammar explanations, each with example sentences. The explanations are clear, and there are no glaring errors.

However, there are a few drawbacks. Even though the book was written in 1994, sometimes it seems like it was written in 1954. The accents of the speakers on the accompanying CDs and VCDs are decidedly mainland. While the CDs are useful for review, the workbook doesn’t take advantage of them. There are absolutely no listening comprehension exercises. Also, there are a few grammar constructions taught in the book that many Taiwanese people don’t understand, such as the double 了 construction. Even worse, is the use of 讓 and 叫 as passive markers. For example, “我讓你給弄糊塗了.” Most Taiwanese people under the age of about 50 will say that construction is flat out wrong. In truth, it is standard Mandarin, but it’s Mandarin that simply isn’t used here anymore. While this book isn’t quite ideal, it will get the job done, and many, many people have used it as a stepping stone to the next level.

Pros:

• Comprehensive introduction to Mandarin Grammar
• Well supported by CDs, VCDs, and workbook
• Supports both Pinyin and Zhuyin
• Widely used

Cons:

• No simplified characters
• Outdated usage
• Not particularly interesting
• No listening excercises in the workbook
• Fragile cover

Rating: 3/5
Level: Absolute Beginner

I hope to make this into a useful resource for others learning Chinese, particularly those who wish to learn traditional characters. If you would like to review a Chinese textbook, email it to doubtingtoshuo@gmail.com, preferably with photos of the book.

The name of this movie, 短信一月追, means “short message, chase for a month”. The first thing that I noticed about this movie is that the main character, 賦佳 (played by 古巨基) sounded just like the people in the CDs that accompany 師大’s textbooks. It’s kind of amazing. I’ve been told by literally dozens of Taiwanese people that nobody talks like the people from my old textbook (視聽華語). Well, I guess they’re all wrong. Apparently, plenty of mainlanders and Hongkongers still talk just like that. The main character from 短信一月追 isn’t some crotchety old Chinese teacher either; he’s a hip, teenage, cellphone toting pizza restaurant employee who can ride a bicycle like a bat out of hell. Oh, and he’s hopelessly in love with his best friend’s girlfriend, 雪薇 (played by 張韶涵).

The movie begins with a message from his friend, who is studying in the US. His friend says that he’s dying and needs someone to take care of his girlfriend for him, someone to make sure she doesn’t feel too lonely and hurt. From there the plot takes all kinds of ridiculous and yet somewhat plausible twists. The movie was really sappy. On the good side, though, the plot wasn’t too predictable. I can’t really say I would have chosen this movie if I weren’t trying to improve my Chinese. It was still entertaining, though.

Rating: 2.5/5

He was a writer. He thought he wrote about the future but it really was the past. In his novel, a mysterious train left for 2046 every once in a while. Everyone who went there had the same intention…..to recapture their lost memories. It was said that in 2046, nothing ever changed. Nobody knew for sure if it was true, because nobody who went there had ever come back- except for one. He was there. He chose to leave. He wanted to change.

Winning 6 Hong Kong Film Awards, as well as two Golden Horse Awards, 2046 finally made good on several years of waiting for Wong Kar Wai (王家衛) fans. With echoes of blade runner in a futuristic view of Hong Kong, a vivid picture of Hong Kong in the 1960′s and several sex scenes with Zhang Zi Yi (章子怡), the movie also has what it takes to reach a wider audience.

Despite the fractured nature of the movie, hopping back and forth between the future and the past, it is a simple story. It is the tale of an emotionally wrecked man, Chow Mo Wan (played by Tony Leung), and the many beautiful women whom he loves and loses. The entire movie is a stream of consciousness, a jumble of Chow’s torrid love affairs, love spats, and the ensuing heartbreaks.

Chow’s isn’t an easily likeable character due to his constant inability to be open with himself or others. It’s as if he has a mask, covering his true emotions that cannot be broken by the women who love him. Instead, it is he who breaks them. However he is an extremely real and complex character, and as a result, believable.

Another interesting thing about this movie is that in many if not most of the dialogues, the two people speaking are speaking different languages. Chow speaks Cantonese, and Cantonese only. His landlord speaks nothing but Mandarin. The landlord’s daughter is dating a Japanese man who answers her only in Japanese. Even the character in Chow’s futuristic novel is a Japanese man speaking to Mandarin-speaking robots. While the language issue is never addressed openly (i.e. nobody ever has problems understanding the other’s language), one has to wonder if this was to increase the sense of Chow’s isolation amidst all of his friends.

Chow is clearly a man capable of loving deeply. What he needs to know if his love is unrequited. And in seeking happiness, the message seems to be that there is no other way.

Rating: 4/5

This is where I’ll post reviews of all the Chinese movies I watch. I may occasionally include a non-Chinese film as well. If there’s a Chinese movie you’ve recently seen that is either particularly good or particularly bad, send your review to doubtingtoshuo@gmail.com.