Many of our readers are interested in selecting books based on the total number of different Chinese words used to tell the story. So I thought it would be useful to list all our fiction books and show the Chinese vocabulary total for each. The list is at the bottom of this post. There’s quite a range in vocabulary size, from our beginning reader “Twenty Three Cats” with just 101 words, up to the complete…
Continue readingWe just published our first totally new story in almost a year. It’s the classic Chinese legend The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl (牛郎织女). This is a wonderful story, told using fewer than 500 Chinese words, most of which are in the HSK3 vocabulary list. While most versions of this story are short, our version comes in at 15,000 Chinese characters, which works out to about 10,000 words. The book is 225 pages long. As usual, the…
Continue readingWell, I’m embarassed. It turns out that we had a pretty serious error in The Emperor in Hell, the fifth book in our 31-book Journey to the West series, and it took five years for anyone to notice it. If you’re familiar with the story, you know that the Dragon King of the Jing River, who is responsible for bringing rain, is horrified to learn that a fortune-teller is giving advice to a fisherman on how…
Continue readingFrom now through December 10 2024, you can get our most popular series of graded readers – Journey to the West and Last King of Shang – in paperback, for a really low price. You get 33% off the regular price, with no sales tax and free shipping to the US and Canada. This offer is for the following three sets of books: The Journey to the West – All 31 Individual Books in the Series, In Simplified OR Traditional Chinese, Pinyin and…
Continue readingNow that we’ve finished our two-year Last King of Shang project, we’re taking a short break for the holidays. But I’m thinking about what we should do next. Right now we are not looking to take on another huge project (sorry, no Romance of the Three Kingdoms!). But I am interested in publishing a series of short graded readers geared towards the lower end of reading ability, say around 500 to 800 word vocabulary. Ideally…
Continue readingWe’ve just released two oversized hardcover books that will make perfect gifts. They are the complete versions of our two best-selling Chinese novels, “Journey to the West” and “The Last King of Shang” (based on Investiture of the Gods). For both novels, we’ve converted the entire story – in Simplified Chinese, pinyin and English – into a single very large book. Each book is 8.5″ wide, 11″ high, and weighs over 5 pounds. Because the…
Continue readingI’m delighted to announce that the complete audiobook of The Last King of Shang is now available on Audible.com. This is a high-quality recording, almost 22 hours long, with my introduction in English read by Geraldo Cortes, and all 100 chapters read in Chinese by our terrific audio artist Junyou Chen. If you’re an Audible.com member, you can get this for 1 credit. If you’re not, you can still buy it for $20.96. Check it…
Continue readingSo, you’ve been wanting to read our epic Last King of Shang series (based on the Chinese classic Investiture of the Gods), but you’ve been frightened away by the prospect of having to buy and read all six books in the series? We’ve heard you! Now that the series is completed, our final task has been to create a set of comprehensive, single-volume books that cover the entire series, all 100 chapters. Here they are.…
Continue readingThere’s been a lot of buzz about the new video game Wukong: Black Myth. Released in August 2024, it is one of the fastest selling video games of all time, with 18 million units sold in the first two weeks. It’s also an incredibly beautiful game, with computer graphics that appear completely lifelike. Check out the 5-minute trailer on YouTube here. So we thought it would be fun to re-issue our English language version of…
Continue readingIn the last couple of months we’ve taken on three brand new book projects. They’re in various stages of development, but I want to share some general info on what’s coming. First on the list is Chinese Myths and Legends, an easy-to-read collection of nine short stories. These stories will be familiar to every Chinese person, as well as anyone else learning the language. They are Pangu Opens Heaven and Earth, Nüwa Creates Mankind, Nüwa…
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