Clear, readable, and easy to consult, this book is an ideal reference for students to extend their knowledge of Chinese.

Winner of the Chinese Language Teachers Association’s 2014 Cengage Learning Excellence and Innovation in Teaching Chinese Award. Action! China is a practical guide for intermediate to advanced students of Chinese wanting to maximize their study abroad experience and enhance their language skills. This handy guide contains over 90 Field Performance tasks which prompt real-life interactions with native speakers. By carrying out these real-life tasks students refine and solidify existing communication skills and gain a fuller understanding of and participation in the target culture. The guide also provides over 60 Performance Watch tasks which help students understand how native speakers accomplish communicative goals through guided observation and analysis of naturally occurring interactions. Action! China helps students understand and participate socially in Chinese, guiding them through skill-getting and skill-using processes and enabling them to form meaningful connections with Chinese people in the community.

Using Chinese Synonyms is an essential reference book, specifically designed for non-native speakers of Chinese, and for teachers and other language professionals who want a user-friendly guide to the finer nuances of Chinese synonyms. It contains approximately 1700 synonyms in 316 groups. With the particular needs of non-native speakers of Chinese in mind, this invaluable book selects and explains words and phrases in everyday use, allowing students to enhance their knowledge of one of the most important and widely-spoken languages in the world. This book assists in the development of fluent, spontaneous and skilful use of Chinese synonyms.

Learning Chinese can be frustrating and difficult, partly because it's very different from European languages. Following a teacher, textbook or language course is not enough. They show you the characters, words and grammar you need to become proficient in Chinese, but they don't teach you how to learn them! Regardless of what program you're in (if any), you need to take responsibility for your own learning. If you don't, you will miss many important things that aren't included in the course you're taking. If you study on your own, you need to be even more aware of what you need to do, what you're doing at the moment and the difference between them. Here are some of the questions I have asked and have since been asked many times by students: How do I learn characters efficiently? How do I get the most out of my course or teacher? Which are the best learning tools and resources? How can I become fluent in Mandarin? How can I improve my pronunciation? How do I learn successfully on my own? How can I motivate myself to study more? How can I fit learning Chinese into a busy schedule? The answers I've found to these questions and many others form the core of this book. It took eight years of learning, researching, teaching and writing to figure these things out. Not everybody has the time to do that! I can't go back in time and help myself learn in a better way, but I can help you! This book is meant for normal students and independent language learners alike. While it covers all major areas of learning, you won't learn Chinese just by reading this book. It's like when someone on TV teaches you how to cook: you won't get to eat the delicious dish just by watching the program; you have to do the cooking yourself. That's true for this book as well. When you apply what you learn, it will boost your learning, making every hour you spend count for more, but you still have to do the learning yourself. This is what a few readers have said about the book: "The book had me nodding at a heap of things I'd learnt the hard way, wishing I knew them when I started, as well as highlighting areas that I'm currently missing in my study." - Geoff van der Meer, VP engineering "This publication is like a bible for anyone serious about Chinese proficiency. It's easy for anyone to read and written with scientific precision." - Zachary Danz, foreign teacher, children's theatre artist About me I started learning Chinese when I was 23 (that's more than eight years ago now) and have since studied in many different situations, including serious immersion programs abroad, high-intensity programs in Sweden, online courses, as well as on the side while working or studying other things. I have also successfully used my Chinese in a graduate program for teaching Chinese as a second language, taught entirely in Chinese mostly for native speakers (the Graduate Institute for Teaching Chinese as a Second Language at National Taiwan Normal University). All these parts have contributed to my website, Hacking Chinese, where I write regularly about how to learn Mandarin.

Using Chinese Classics for Intercultural Communicative Competence presents new strategies and tools for integrating Mandarin language teaching with fostering intercultural competencies through contemporary, global lenses on Chinese classic texts. Chinese classic texts are canonical works in Chinese culture published before 1911. They offer a window into deeply held cultural values which learners of the Chinese language would benefit from studying to facilitate meaningful intercultural dialogues. With chapters covering classic Chinese texts, such as Journey to the West, Dream of the Red Chamber, and The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, this book will demonstrate the value, importance, and feasibility of teaching Chinese classic works for ICC development in the Chinese world language classroom, and equip teachers with carefully planned, classroom-tested lesson models that demonstrate the innovative, integrative models advocated in this book. This book will be valuable for pre- and in-service Mandarin Chinese teachers across various institutional settings at different levels, looking for ready materials and professional development resources. The book can also be used as core material for teacher training programs.

Using the Chinese energy map for your health

Open access edition: DOI 10.6069/9780295749013 At first glance, medicine and poison might seem to be opposites. But in China’s formative era of pharmacy (200–800 CE), poisons were strategically employed as healing agents to cure everything from abdominal pain to epidemic disease. Healing with Poisons explores the ways physicians, religious figures, court officials, and laypersons used toxic substances to both relieve acute illnesses and enhance life. It illustrates how the Chinese concept of du—a word carrying a core meaning of “potency”—led practitioners to devise a variety of methods to transform dangerous poisons into effective medicines. Recounting scandals and controversies involving poisons from the Era of Division to the Tang, historian Yan Liu considers how the concept of du was central to how the people of medieval China perceived both their bodies and the body politic. He also examines the wide range of toxic minerals, plants, and animal products used in classical Chinese pharmacy, including everything from the herb aconite to the popular recreational drug Five-Stone Powder. By recovering alternative modes of understanding wellness and the body’s interaction with foreign substances, this study cautions against arbitrary classifications and exemplifies the importance of paying attention to the technical, political, and cultural conditions in which substances become truly meaningful. Healing with Poisons is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem) and the generous support of the University of Buffalo.

Many agree that rapid urbanization in China in the late 20th and early 21st centuries is a mega process significantly reshaping China and the global economy. China’s urbanization also carries a certain mystique, which has long fascinated generations of scholars and journalists alike. As it has turned out, many of the asserted Chinese feats are mostly fancied claims or gross misinterpretations (of statistics, for example). There does exist, however, an urbanization that displays rather uncommon "Chinese" characteristics that remain to inadequately understood. Building on his three decades of careful research, Professor Kam Wing Chan expertly dissects the complexity of China’s hukou system, migration, urbanization and their interrelationships in this set of journal articles published in the last ten years. These works range from seminal papers on Chinese urban definitions and statistics; and broad-perspective analysis of the hukou system of its first semi-centennial; to examinations of migration trends and geography; and critical evaluations of China’s 2014 urbanization blueprint and hukou reform plan. This convenient assemblage contains many of Chan’s recent important works. Together they also form a relatively coherent set on this topic. They are essential readings to anyone serious about gaining a true understanding of the prodigious urbanization in contemporary China.

Focusing on the ancient, medieval, and early-modern eras, this collection considers the beginnings of Sino-Japanese Relations in the Ancient East Asian World, focusing on changes of the East Asian international system. It examines the establishment of the East Asian International Order in the 7th Century and the advance of Sino- Japanese relations in medieval times. It also considers the impact of initial contact with modern Western powers on modernization, and examines the points of rupture which deeply affected both cultures, for China the Opium War, and for Japan it the Black Ships of Commodore Matthew Perry and the Meiji Restoration. Based on research conducted jointly by Chinese and Japanese scholars, this collection provides a unique insight into the development of Chinese and Japanese culture from comparative perspectives, offering an in-depth study of the countries’ political, religious and societal structures to deepen objective perception toward history and promote mutual understanding in East Asia.