Explores the different meanings of forty fundamental ideograms of Chinese characters.

In the best-selling tradition of The Spirit of the Chinese Character comes a beautiful companion, The Nature of the Chinese Character. Masterfully crafted earthly symbols are displayed throughout these rich, colorful pages--from sky and wind to water and sand. Each is accompanied by a graceful drawing illustrating the organic form that inspired the calligraphic representation and an enlightening description of the meaning, lore, and construction of the character. At once an inquiry into centuries of thought and a paean to the oldest functional art form, The Nature of the Chinese Character is exquisite in its own right-an elegant keepsake that both informs and enchants

An inspiring introduction to Chan Buddhism in a value-priced hardcover edition. Perfect for daily spiritual guidance and gifts.

This Chinese symbol journal notebook is for a woman, a man, a guy, or a girl. It is used every day. It is used for everyday notes, journal writing, diary thoughts. Great as a Christmas gift, stocking stuffer, Birthday Gifts, Valentine's Day, Father's Day Gift, Mother's Day Gifts, Mindful Gifts, Creative Expression gift, and New Year's Gift. There are 100 pages to make lists, keep things organized, or manifest ideas. Try jotting down lite ideas, deep thoughts, or dreams. Write it down and bring it to life. -Notebook by Sandra J Piotrzkowski

This user-friendly book is aimed at helping students of Mandarin Chinese learn and remember Chinese characters. At last--there is a truly effective and enjoyable way to learn Chinese characters! This book helps students to learn and remember both the meanings and the pronunciations of over 800 characters. This otherwise daunting task is made easier by the use of techniques based on the psychology of learning and memory. key principles include the use of visual imagery, the visualization of short "stories," and the systematic building up of more complicated characters from basic building blocks. Although Learning Chinese Characters is primarily a book for serious learners of Mandarin Chinese, it can be used by anyone with interest in Chinese characters, without any prior knowledge of Chinese. It can be used alongside (or after, or even before) a course in the Chinese language. All characters are simplified (as in mainland China), but traditional characters are also given, when available. Key features: Specially designed pictures and stories are used in a structured way to make the learning process more enjoyable and effective, reducing the need for rote learning to the absolute minimum. The emphasis throughout is on learning and remembering the meanings and pronunciations of the characters. Tips are also included on learning techniques and how to avoid common problems. Characters are introduced in a logical sequence, which also gives priority to learning the most common characters first. Modern, simplified characters are used, with pronunciations given in pinyin. Key information is given for each character, including radical, stroke-count, traditional form, compounds, and guidance on writing the character. This is a practical guide with a clear, concise and appealing layout, and it is well-indexed with easy lookup methods. The 800 Chinese characters and 1,033 compounds specified for the original HSK Level A proficiency test are covered.

First published in 1919 by Ezra Pound, Ernest Fenollosa’s essay on the Chinese written language has become one of the most often quoted statements in the history of American poetics. As edited by Pound, it presents a powerful conception of language that continues to shape our poetic and stylistic preferences: the idea that poems consist primarily of images; the idea that the sentence form with active verb mirrors relations of natural force. But previous editions of the essay represent Pound’s understanding—it is fair to say, his appropriation—of the text. Fenollosa’s manuscripts, in the Beinecke Library of Yale University, allow us to see this essay in a different light, as a document of early, sustained cultural interchange between North America and East Asia. Pound’s editing of the essay obscured two important features, here restored to view: Fenollosa’s encounter with Tendai Buddhism and Buddhist ontology, and his concern with the dimension of sound in Chinese poetry. This book is the definitive critical edition of Fenollosa’s important work. After a substantial Introduction, the text as edited by Pound is presented, together with his notes and plates. At the heart of the edition is the first full publication of the essay as Fenollosa wrote it, accompanied by the many diagrams, characters, and notes Fenollosa (and Pound) scrawled on the verso pages. Pound’s deletions, insertions, and alterations to Fenollosa’s sometimes ornate prose are meticulously captured, enabling readers to follow the quasi-dialogue between Fenollosa and his posthumous editor. Earlier drafts and related talks reveal the developmentof Fenollosa’s ideas about culture, poetry, and translation. Copious multilingual annotation is an important feature of the edition. This masterfully edited book will be an essential resource for scholars and poets and a starting point for a renewed discussion of the multiple sources of American modernist poetry.

At long last the approach that has helped thousands of learners memorize Japanese kanji has been adapted to help students with Chinese characters. Book 1 of Remembering Simplified Hanzi covers the writing and meaning of the 1,000 most commonly used characters in the simplified Chinese writing system, plus another 500 that are best learned at an early stage. (Book 2 adds another 1,500 characters for a total of 3,000.) Of critical importance to the approach found in these pages is the systematic arranging of characters in an order best suited to memorization. In the Chinese writing system, strokes and simple components are nested within relatively simple characters, which can, in turn, serve as parts of more complicated characters and so on. Taking advantage of this allows a logical ordering, making it possible for students to approach most new characters with prior knowledge that can greatly facilitate the learning process. Guidance and detailed instructions are provided along the way. Students are taught to employ "imaginative memory" to associate each character’s component parts, or "primitive elements," with one another and with a key word that has been carefully selected to represent an important meaning of the character. This is accomplished through the creation of a "story" that engagingly ties the primitive elements and key word together. In this way, the collections of dots, strokes, and components that make up the characters are associated in memorable fashion, dramatically shortening the time required for learning and helping to prevent characters from slipping out of memory.