Foreword

When it comes to learning a foreign language, relying on a set of textbooks or time spent in the classroom is never nearly enough. That is because memory gets eroded by time; one keeps forgetting what one has learned. Haven’t we all been frustrated by our inability to remember new vocabulary? One learns a word and quickly forgets it, so next time when one comes across it one has to look it up in a dictionary. Only then does one realize that one used to know it, and so one keeps having to look it up in a dictionary, and one starts to blame oneself, “why am I so forgetful?” when in fact, it’s not your shaky memory that’s at fault, but the fact that unless you review constantly, what you’ve learned quickly becomes dormant. The Chinese Breeze graded series is designed specially to help you remember what you’ve learned.

Everyone learning a second language has his or her way of jogging his or her memory. For example, some people make index cards or vocabulary notebooks so as to thumb through them frequently. Some simply try to go through dictionaries and try to memorize all the vocabulary items from A to Z. The spirit may be laudable, but it is a painful process, but the results are far from being sure. Chinese Breeze is a series of graded readers purposely written by professional authors. Each reader not only incorporates all the vocabulary and grammar specific to the grade but also an interesting and absorbing plot. It enables you to refresh and reinforce your knowledge while at the same time having a pleasurable time with the story. If you make Chinese Breeze a constant companion in your studies of Chinese, you won’t have to worry about forgetting your vocabulary and grammar. You will also develop your feel for the language and make Chinese firmly rooted in your mind.

Thanks are due to Nyan-ping Bi, Xianmin Liu, and Ping Wei for arranging more than sixty students to field-test several of the readers in the Chinese Breeze series. Professor Tao-chung Yao at the University of Hawaii, Ms. Yu Li and Ph.D. students Ann Kelleher and Nicole Richardson of UC Davis provided very good editorial suggestions. Yu Li and Bo Yang helped build the Chinese Breeze (Hanyu Feng) websites. We thank our colleagues, students, and friends for their support and assistance.