I recently went to the local bookstore and picked up a few books in Chinese. If you’re studying Chinese and at an intermediate level the adolescent section is a gold mine of material. (It’s also funny to be seen looking through books written for 4th graders. Silly foreigners)

I picked up three books: （from top to bottom) 伊索寓言精选–Selected Aesop’s Fables, 无人岛探险记–Deserted Island Adventure, and 男生日记–er…A Boy’s Diary…。Each book is different in content and style.

‘Selected Aesop’s Fables’ is great because it consists of a whole bunch of short stories. The reading level isn’t hard and the stories are only a few pages. Plus, there’s Pinyin! It’s not a good idea to rely entirely on Pinyin but I’m convinced that it’s a good method of reading material in which you may bump into characters you’re not sure of. It makes looking them up a hell of a lot less time consuming. Also you get to learn life lessons as you go along. For example, don’t pull a stuck bone out of a wolf’s mouth and expect him to repay you. However, if you help a lion with a thorn in his paw, karma will certainly smile upon you. (Mental note: lions are nicer than wolves?)

‘Deserted Island Adventure’ is great because it’s a comic book. The kind of language used tends to be humorous and includes slang and the such. The nice thing about a book with pictures is, well, the pictures. They don’t always provide perfect context, but it helps. I also actually like comic books and reading it is entertaining.

And finally, ‘A Boy’s Diary’. I know, I know. Reading the fictional diary of a young boy may seem weird at first, but damnit!, it helps. All of the language is ‘I did this…’, and ‘I feel this way’ making it good for all you’re expressive needs. After all, we do talk about ourselves quite a bit don’t we? (Maybe there’s a fable about that one…)

I’m not opposed to studying actual textbooks, but when you’re studying on your own, I think using varied and more interesting material is the way to go. It’s less like work and you can freely switch between different types of reading. Good stuff.

(Another huge plus is that it’s dirt cheap. As opposed to the cost of a single textbook usually being somewhere between 100-200RMB, all three of these books cost me a total of whole 51RMB.)