An orphan girl gets help from a goose. A poor family receives a magical gift. A boy is stranded alone on a ship in a storm. And two magicians perform a deadly trick.Believe it or not, it's possible for you to read and understand the four wonderful stories in this book even if you start off not knowing a single word of Chinese! We won't lie to you and say it will be easy, but with time and patience you can certainly do it.Each page of Chinese faces a page of pinyin ...

The Qin dynasty lasted only fifteen years, yet it transformed China forever.The story begins in the violent world of the Warring States period, when seven competing kingdoms battled for supremacy. At the center of the drama is Ying Zheng, the son of a hostage prince who became the king of Qin, defeated all rival states, and declared himself Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of China.Through sweeping military campaigns, bold reforms, and strict Legalist policies, Qin Shi Huan...

China, 1057 B.C. The foolish king of the Shang Dynasty has gravely insulted a goddess. In revenge, the goddess sends a thousand-year-old fox demon to extinguish the soul of the beautiful young Daji, inhabit her body, and seduce the king into taking her as his chief concubine. Daji slowly gains control of the king and his kingdom, leading the Shang Dynasty towards chaos and disaster. But gods and demons are all watching closely and try to take matters into their own hands.This book ...

Three individuals. Two species. One campfire. And everything riding on what happens next.When a human seed ship from a dying Earth crashes into the silva, it enters a world already claimed. The Waya are six-limbed beings with language, law, and long memories. The first thing the humans do is kill one of them. The fragile possibility of coexistence nearly ends before it begins.Katan, an aging, glowjuice-addicted Waya, is sent to watch the survivors. Not to understand them. N...

The Last King of Shang is a retelling, in modern Simplified Chinese, of the classic novel Investiture of the Gods. It's a gripping story set in ancient China, weaving together mythology, magic, and heroism. It is a story of the rise and fall of powerful gods and mortals amidst a backdrop of political intrigue and celestial conflict. Seduced by Daji, his beautiful fox demon concubine, the Shang king brings his kingdom to the brink of ruin through cruelty and neglect.A group of rebel...

In the beginning, the King of Shang was a good man…China, 1057 B.C. The well-meaning but foolish king of the Shang Dynasty has gravely insulted a goddess. In revenge, the angry goddess sends a thousand-year-old fox demon to extinguish the soul of the beautiful young Daji, inhabit her body, and seduce the king into taking her as his chief concubine. Daji slowly gains control of the king and his kingdom, leading the Shang Dynasty towards chaos and disaster. But gods and demons are al...

A long, long time ago, in a magical version of ancient China, an island called Aolai stood in the sea like a king in his palace. In the center of the island was Flower Fruit Mountain, and at the very top of the mountain was a large stone, as tall as six men. The stone was made pregnant by heaven and earth, and one day the wind blew over the egg and it cracked open. A little stone monkey emerged. He opened his eyes, and two beams of light shot up to heaven. The Jade Emperor on his throne sa...

The story of Cinderella is possibly the world's most popular folk tale. The earliest known version is from Greece around two thousand years ago, and over the next thousand years, it traveled to France, Italy and Germany, and eventually to the Walt Disney studio in America.But as the Cinderella story traveled from Greece to Western Europe, it was also carried eastward to Asia along the Silk Road and other ancient trade routes. The story of Ye Xian in this book is the oldest known As...

A young boy finds himself alone in a ship in a terrible storm. All the other passengers and crew are dead. Suddenly he sees a bright yellow ball of fire on the mast...This is a short story in Simplified Chinese, pinyin and English, excerpted from the short story collection "Learn to Read Chinese, Book 1" by Jeff Pepper and Xiao Hui Wang. It's based on stories told by Norman Hinsdale Pitman in "A Chinese Wonder Book" originally published in 1918.Folk tales are immen...

Folk tales are immensely popular in China. Passed down orally over the centuries from grandparents and parents to children, they serve as an unwritten handbook for living. Nearly all Chinese folk tales are about simple people who find themselves in difficult situations. These people are often helped (and occasionally hindered) by talking animals, as well as by powerful gods, wizards and other supernatural beings who actively interfere in events here on earth. And within every Chinese folk ...

A young boy shares a little house in Beijing with twenty three cats. His friend comes to visit, but the two of them can't sit down, can't study, and can't even eat dinner together because of all the cats. What to do? The answer, which involves a very large dog, will surprise and delight you.This wonderful little tale is for beginning Chinese students of all ages. Its tiny vocabulary of just 101 words is taken from the HSK-1 list of words used to teach beginning students of Chinese....

Sang is a young scholar living alone in a small village in 18th century China. One night a strange and beautiful woman arrives at his house, and he soon falls deeply in love with her. But later, a second even more beautiful woman arrives, and things become extremely complicated. This is a story about fox spirits and ghosts, love and lust, and the unpredictable nature of the human and the not-quite-human heart.This book is a retelling of a Chinese short story called "Lotus Fragrance...