So tomorrow is the last day of my second term at MTC. Finally. It’s been great; my teacher is wonderful and I love my classmates. But I’m getting to the point that I can’t stand these textbooks. The PAVC series is good, don’t get me wrong, but I’m ready to move on to something more challenging and less cheesy.

As I mentioned before, I did well enough on my test that I was able to skip part of PAVC Book 4. My teacher thought I should be able to skip further though, and so I was given another test to take. I passed, and so next term I’m taking Mini Radio Plays (迷你廣播劇). Most people take Far East Everyday Chinese Book 3 after finishing PAVC 4, but my reading is already beyond that book’s level, while my speaking and listening are lagging behind. Mini Radio Plays is very 口語, so that will help me a lot. Yes, it will still be pretty cheesy, but maybe in a fun way, since it seems like a lot of the plots are really melodramatic. That should make for some good discussion in class.

One of the great things about Mini Radio Plays is that the textbook only contains Chinese. All words are defined in Chinese, and English is only used when absolutely necessary, like when talking about flower names (something like 玫瑰花：花名，英文：rose). It looks like this only happens a few times in the book, so it will be great not to have to rely on some crappy translation into English (really, PAVC editors, you can do better).

Speaking of progress, I’m close to finishing Taiwan Today. I should easily be able to finish by the time the next term starts (March 5th), though my goal was to finish by the end of February. I’m also pretty much finished with Lessons 1-24 of Fuller’s An Introduction to Literary Chinese. That’s only through the end of the Intermediate Texts, while my goal was to finish Lesson 27 in February.

But that’s OK. The lessons very suddenly start to get longer and more difficult in the last few lessons of the Intermediate Texts, but then Lesson 25 (the first Advanced Text) is something like 4 times as long as Lesson 24. I don’t feel quite ready for such long and difficult texts yet, and since Literary Chinese for Advanced Beginners (進階文言文讀本) doesn’t seem all that much more difficult than what I’ve done so far (at least at the beginning of the book), I’m going to use that book as a bridge to the more advanced stuff in Fuller. This book is also 100% in Chinese, which is great.

I’ll also be using MTC’s book Learning Chinese with Newspaper I 讀報學華語（一） as a supplementary book. The first few lessons are pretty easy, but it looks like they quickly get more difficult. One lesson per week from this book should be pretty easy to do next term, and then I can move on to Newspaper II if I want.

As if I didn’t already have enough books to carry around, I’ll also be starting a book series I recently found called Supplementary Chinese Readers. They’re intended to be supplementary to a main classroom textbook (hence the name), and so should be perfect. I’ll be starting from the second book in the series, Chinese Customs and Traditions 中國的風俗習慣. The readings are fairly short and there are a reasonably small number of new vocab words per chapter. Should be good practice, and I’ll hopefully learn something new along the way.

I also intend to use 20 Lectures next term, but not in a big capacity like I had originally planned. It will basically be a little extra work each week, mainly for the purpose of learning some of the historical and cultural vocab in the book. Very much last priority though. So altogether that looks like this:

Main Text: Mini Radio Plays 迷你廣播劇
Self-study (reading): Chinese Customs and Traditions 中國的風俗習慣
Self-study (reading): Newspaper I 讀報學華語（一）
Self-study (speaking/vocab): 20 Lectures on Chinese Culture 中國文化二十講
Literary Chinese: Literary Chinese for Advanced Beginners 進階文言文讀本

Five textbooks! I must be crazy. But really, I don’t think the three self-study texts are going to require the kind of intensive study that Taiwan Today has. The newspaper book might be a little more difficult once I get further along, but still, one lesson per week is a pretty easy pace to keep up. Plus, let’s not forget the goal, right? I need to be able to read really high-level stuff like academic journal articles and books by the time I’m done here. The only way I know of to do that is to cram as much into my head as possible.

This comes with some side effects, of course. My work in class is suffering due to my spending more time with other textbooks than with my classwork/homework. What this really means is that I don’t usually do all of my homework, or if I do, it’s pretty half-assed. My teacher knows what I’m doing though, and I’ve been at the top of my class pretty much every test we’ve had this term, so she’s totally cool with it. It’s not like I’m slacking off. “Can I not do my homework so I can study more Chinese? Oh, and 文言文？” Yeah, she’s cool with it.

In other news, I seem to finally be having some success finding work. I did some CV and cover letter editing for a girl I met last week, and she was so happy with my work that she’s going to be sending her friends my way with their CVs, cover letters, essays, tutoring needs, etc. She’s working on her MBA, so I think there’s the potential for a lot of work here.

So the next term will really be as much an exercise in time management as it is in learning Chinese. In order to have time to do the editing and tutoring work that I need to do to make some extra cash, I have to be really efficient with my studying, and really rigorous with my schedule. I’ve never been a highly organized person, especially when it comes to my time (I’m pretty laid back in real life), so this should be interesting.

I have a full week off before the next term starts to recover from this week (which has been very busy), get everything finalized for next term, and buy a bike. I’m also revising my resume and maybe buying some business cards to make myself look legitimate. Hopefully I’ll have some time to blog, but we’ll see. Next term I probably won’t have tons of time to write here, but I’ll do what I can.

Up through the end of Practical Audio-Visual Chinese Book 4, it’s a pretty clear choice every term. After book IV, your options open a bit. The standard route, as I’ve written before, is to take Far East Everyday Chinese Book 3, then PAVC 5. Some people (maybe one in four) choose to take Mini Radio Plays instead of Far East 3. Mini Radio Plays is just what it sounds like, 12 lessons in the form of short radio dramas (7-14 minutes).

I’ve heard nothing but good about it from other students who have taken it. One said that after finishing the book he was really able to listen to the radio here and understand pretty much everything. Another person said he was now able to attend university lectures and follow with no problems. I’m a little skeptical about these results, but the book really does seem quite good.

Now, here’s the problem. My score on the test the other day will allow me to skip to chapter 10 (or maybe it was 11?) of PAVC 4. So next term, after a few weeks once we’ve finished Book 4, we’ll take a vote on which book to do next. Which statistically pretty much means it will be Far East 3. Depending on the teacher, the vote may take place either in the first week of the term (which is OK) or once Book 4 is done, at which point it’s too late to switch classes. So all in all, it doesn’t look very good.

My teacher thinks there’s no point in me doing Far East 3, since there’s so much overlap between that book and what I’ve already studied (she is familiar with my study outside of class and is really cool about working with me when I don’t turn in my homework because I’m studying other stuff). She actually said she thinks I could skip straight to PAVC 5, which is more 書面, but I don’t want to jump that far because my listening and speaking still need some work, and I can keep working on my reading on the side like I’ve been doing.

So she recommended that I go to the office and request to skip straight to Mini Radio Plays. It’s only a few extra chapters to skip, and I have no problem understanding the first few lessons of the book. So I’ll be asking tomorrow. I’m sure it will take some pushing, and I may need to get my teacher to tell them that she thinks it’s a good idea, but she told me it’s our right as students to take the classes we want to take if our Chinese is up to the task, and she said I should be able to get them to let me take what I want to take, provided there are other students who also want to take the class (which in this case, there are).

So, wish me luck!

I’m finishing Chapter 8 today, so I’ll call it a success.

Far East IIB: finish Chapter 21

Not only Chapter 21, but the whole book (Chapter 24). Success.

Fuller: Finish Lesson 19

Finishing Lesson 19 today. Success.

PAVC: Finish Book III

Took the test today for the last chapter. Success.

Apply to ICLP

Not yet. Failed. But I still have time.

Finish The Emperor of China and start on Return to Dragon Mountain. (apparently WordPress won’t let me do red italics)

Failed. I’ve been really busy this month, and when I wasn’t busy I was sick. This was kind of a last priority, so no big deal.

So all in all a successful month. A couple failures, but those goals were at the bottom of the list for a reason. I learned upwards of 300 words every week this month, in addition to studying 文言文 harder than I ever have, which has almost pushed me to the point of burnout. I planned on starting a new textbook after finishing Far East III, but I’ll hold off on that. I started it, but I couldn’t stand doing another chapter on 中國的地形與氣候 or 中國的傳統農業經濟制度, or even worse 自由中國和中共的經濟 (this was 20 Lectures on Chinese Culture from the 80′s, published here in Taiwan). Instead, I’ve started reading 哈利波特：神秘的魔法石 (Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone), which is fun and easier than I expected. I’m not setting any goals with that yet, partly because I don’t know how it will go yet (it’s my first book in Chinese), and partly because I want to keep it fun. I’ve also picked up a few supplementary textbooks that I’ll use off and on when the interest strikes, but again I won’t be setting any goals here. One is a book of radio plays with a CD, which is pretty cheesy but decent practice, one is a primer on 書法 which also serves as an upper-intermediate to advanced language textbook, and one is a newspaper reading textbook used at my school.

Anyway, February’s goals:

Taiwan Today: finish Chapter 14 (whole book)
Fuller: Finish Lesson 27
PAVC: Through Book IV Chapter 4
Apply to ICLP (??)
Finish The Emperor of China

Finishing Taiwan Today should be no problem. With Fuller, it depends on how much difficulty I have when I get into the advanced texts (starting in Lesson 25). The PAVC goal is just where my class is scheduled to end this term. My teacher thinks I can skip part of Book IV and start next term at Chapter 11, which would be great (that’s skipping half a term). The ICLP application isn’t due until the end of March, but I want to at least work on it this month, if not finish it. Finishing the Spence book should be no problem this month (fewer extra-curricular obligations), but I don’t know if I want to read another Spence book after that or not.

How was January for you?

Today, however, I picked it up and read the first page with few difficulties. Sure, there were a fair few words I didn’t know, but most of them were comprised of characters I already know and were pretty easy to figure out. A few I really couldn’t make a guess at, so I looked them up. But now, I can read the whole page. Tomorrow I’ll read the next page or two. Monday I’ll read more. Eventually I’ll hopefully get to the point that I can make it through several pages per day (I hope so, or this will take me a year to read).

So the main tools I’ll be using are Pleco (of course), 國語辭典 (and it’s little brother, 國語辭典簡編本), the English version of the book, and a pencil. Since the edition I have is the Taiwan edition, there are some Taiwan-specific words used. One I came across (in the first sentence, no less) was 託福. Apparently the mainland uses 托福, and none of my dictionaries had the Taiwan variant, so I had to use the 國語辭典 to find it. That probably won’t be too frequent an occurrence though. The pencil is to put a line next to words I don’t know so I can look them up, and the English version is to check when I’m not sure I’ve read something right.

Now, not every word I look up is going into my flash card deck. This is going to be difficult for me, because I have a habit of dumping everything into flash cards. It would just be too much to keep up with on top of class and everything else I’m studying. The point is to get used to reading extensively, rather than going through with a fine-toothed comb and learning every little word I come across. The upside of this is that I’ll probably learn a lot of vocab in passing, just by exposure and repetition.

So how great is that? I’ve been planning on wading through a bunch of dry textbooks before I could sit down with a book, but here I am, reading a book. They’re good textbooks, yes, but let’s be honest here. It’s much more interesting reading something like this than reading another lesson on 中國的地形與氣候. So I’m going to continue with the textbooks, but not at the expense of Harry, Ron, and Hermione. The way to get better at reading, as they say, is reading. The textbooks provide good information on grammar constructions and such, so they’re valuable, but no matter how many textbooks I study, I won’t be able to read a book until I read one. It will be slow and difficult at first, but it will get better, or so I’m told.

給我加油吧！

A reader asked me:

If I had to buy one 文言文 book, what would you suggest? I’d like to get started on that. Thanks.

Well, that’s hard to say. It depends what your current level is in modern Chinese, what you goal is with learning 文言文 (whether to improve your reading ability in modern Chinese or because you want to be able to read the classics or whatever), and all kinds of things. However, I don’t think anyone can go wrong with Michael Fuller’s An Introduction to Literary Chinese. There are other textbooks in English out there, even some good ones, but I’ve seen this one recommended time and again by both professors and learners as the best book for beginners in Literary Chinese. I should also mention Paul Rouzer’s A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese, which I left at home in the States because I like Fuller’s book better. Rouzer’s is a bit newer, and also comes highly recommended by those who know, but I personally prefer the way Fuller’s book is structured, not to mention that Fuller’s book is designed specifically with Pulleyblank’s Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar in mind.

Fuller starts out with a brief “sketch” of Literary Chinese in which he discusses the basic structure of the language, pronunciation in Old and Middle Chinese, periodization of the language, etc. After that comes Part One, Texts to Introduce Basic Grammar, which contains eight lessons. Each lesson introduces you to a different aspect of syntax, and the texts for each lesson are pulled from Classical sources, so from the beginning you’re reading selections from 論語, 韓非子, 戰國策, 孟子, etc. The lessons introduce concepts like nominal and verbal sentences, parts of speech, coordinate verbs, nominalized verbs, auxiliary verbs, embedded sentences, etc. There’s also a very basic introduction to reading classical commentary.

Part Two is Intermediate Texts, consisting of 16 lessons (9-24). Again, these are pulled from texts like 說苑, 新序, 莊子, 史記, etc. The texts gradually increase in length and difficulty, until in Lesson 24 you read a nearly 700-character biography of 淳于髡 from 史記.

Part Three, Advanced Texts, has five selections from 孟子, 莊子, 史記, 王羲之, and 陶潛. The passages are quite a bit longer than any of the intermediate texts. For instance, while the passage in Lesson 24 takes up about a page and a half, the selection for Lesson 25 takes up nearly 6 pages altogether.

Up until the end of the Advanced Texts (Lesson 29), the format is designed to hold your hand. You have explanations of the context of what you’re reading, glosses of every new word you encounter, helpful notes about syntax and style, questions to help you think further about the meaning or syntax of the text, sentence patterns, and bibliographic exercises (one of the best features of the book, IMO). The Advanced Texts cut away a good portion of this, but you still have glosses for new words, introductions to the texts, and suggestions for further reading.

In the last section of the book, however, there is no more hand-holding. Lessons 30-35 are selections from various Tang and Song Dynasty works, and there are no glosses, no notes, no anything other than the text itself. Thankfully, there is still punctuation. The idea is that at this stage, if you’ve been studious and have been doing your bibliographic exercises, you’ve developed the skills to be able to tackle these last texts yourself. Get yourself to the library and dig in.

And that, in my opinion, is the beauty of this book. The goal is to get you reading Literary Chinese texts on your own. By the end, you’ve learned to use big scholarly dictionaries, atlases, etc. to find what you need to know. You’ve gotten some practice with reading and interpreting classical commentaries. These are things you need to be able to do if it is your goal to truly be competent in reading Literary Chinese.

Fuller gives suggestions for further reading, references to Pulleyblank’s outstanding Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar, and such throughout the book. This is excellent stuff for the would-be scholar or for someone who really wants to master Literary Chinese. It may be a bit much for someone who is learning Literary Chinese mainly to improve his modern Chinese reading comprehension. Not that such a person wouldn’t benefit from such things, it’s just that I feel like most people who have no interest in or use for Literary Chinese in and of itself would think this is overkill. I’m not sure which book to recommend for such a person.

However, if your Chinese is at a high enough level that you can get through books and articles in Chinese (with a dictionary) and could probably take a university course taught in Chinese, there may be a book for you. Literary Chinese for Advanced Beginners (進階文言文讀本) is published by SMC Publishing here in Taiwan, and was written by faculty at ICLP. The preface of the book describes its intended audience like this:

Such students can be considered relatively “advanced” in modern Chinese, in the sense that they are near the threshold of functionality in academic Chinese, but are “beginners” in literary Chinese….Another level where this textbook can be profitably used is between an English-based literary Chinese primer such as Harold Shadick’s A First Course in Literary Chinese and a standard literary Chinese textbook designed for native Chinese students.

It consists of 20 selections in roughly chronological order from the pre-Qin to late-Qing era, plus two unglossed early-Republican period texts. None of the texts overlap with 古文觀止 or Shadick’s book, though some do overlap with Fuller’s book. Nevertheless, it seems to be a great book for the two types of students mentioned above. Bear in mind the book contains only the text and glosses for vocab, all of which is in Chinese. No notes, etc. It also contains a glossary of vocabulary and a glossary of grammatical function words. So again, you really need to be at a pretty high level in modern Chinese, or have a good handle on literary Chinese, to utilize this book.

One thing I like is that it includes selections from all periods of Chinese history, while Fuller’s book is weighted heavily toward Zhou-Han Dynasty texts. This is another thing that I think would make these two books a good pair: you build a foundation with classical-era texts, and then move on to read stuff from later periods as well, allowing you to see how the language developed over time.

So there it is: two choices for a first Literary Chinese textbook (although I suspect Rouzer’s book can also be a good choice). Most people will probably do better starting with Fuller’s book first, but if your Chinese is already at a high level, or you’ve already studied Fuller or another introductory book, Literary Chinese for Advanced Beginners is another option. Of course, it goes without saying that if you can purchase more than one book, you should. Get a few. Definitely get Pulleyblank’s Outline. Get a few dictionaries (you’ll need them).

Happy reading!

So I did some digging. Like I do.

There is a version of the book that you can order from the US at great cost (compared to what it would cost here), from Yale University Press. That is, if you’re willing to either pay the high shipping fees and get it quickly or pay reasonable(ish) shipping fees and wait two months before it arrives. But apparently, there’s a similar book that used to be taught at MTC, called Twenty Lectures on Chinese Culture. Yale University Press, who also sells a version of Thought and Society, says that T&S is appropriate for students who have finished either TOCC or Twenty Lectures.

After a little more digging, it appears that these two books might both be based on a book originally written by a few professors at the Institute of Far Eastern Languages, at Yale University. It’s no coincidence that Yale keeps popping up. A very large proportion of textbooks used at high levels at MTC, ICLP, and IUP in Beijing seem to come from either Yale or Princeton. Anyway, that original book was called A Text in College Level Spoken Chinese, Part II: Twenty Lectures on Chinese Culture. You can actually find a PDF of the teacher’s manual online if you Google it, but it’s a pretty bad copy and all the characters are handwritten in (read: scribbled).

So, I came to the conclusion that the books more or less cover the same material. Fortunately for me, and for you if you’re in Taipei and want to find this book, the Lucky Bookstore across the street from MTC on Heping Road carries it. The one copy they keep on display is pretty beat up, but if you ask, they might have a brand new copy in the back for the same price (NT$450). It looks pretty good. Not too hard for the level I’m at, but lots of vocabulary that will be useful to me that my classmates won’t necessarily take any interest in.

The format of the book is, in my opinion, really excellent. Each chapter, or lecture, is like a mini-survey of an aspect of Chinese culture. After the text, the new vocabulary is defined, with pronunciation. The book uses Yale romanization, but it should be really easy to get used to. This section also explains new grammar structures. After that there’s a section called “Usage of New Vocabulary” (生字用法), which uses the new vocab in short phrases and sentences. For instance, in Lesson 1, the usage examples for 來源 are 風俗的來源 (origin of custom) and 文化的來源 (origin of culture). After that, there are two practice sections, with full sentences using the new vocabulary along with translations. Finally, there are two sections of discussion questions. The second section is an extension of the first; for example, the first question in the first section is 中國是一個什麼樣的國家？ In the second section, the question is 中國是一個什麼樣的國家？地理怎麼樣？歷史怎麼樣？ I assume these are intended to be classroom discussion topics.

As for the topics of the “lectures”, here are the titles, to give you an idea of their content:

中國人跟中國文化的來源
中國的自然環境（一、二）
中國曆史（一、二）
中國的傳統政治（一、二）
中國現代的政府和政治（一、二）
中國傳統的農業經濟制度
廿世紀前葉中國的農業和工業
自由中國和中共的經濟
中國的傳統社會
中國現代社會的演變
中國的語言
中國的文字
中國文學的本質
中國的散文和小說
中國的韻文
中國的思想

As you can see, this is very much aimed at would-be academics and people who are interested in Chinese history. Not a whole lot here for business types, for example. I think these qualities should make for a great transition from the “textbooky” stuff we’re learning in class right now (still…) to the more serious material I’ll be covering in another term or two.

So, if you’re studying Chinese in preparation for an academic career and you’ve completed PAVC Book III or the equivalent, this is a great option. I’d also recommend Taiwan Today, which focuses more on written Chinese, as a complement to this book, which is more for higher-level spoken Chinese. Enjoy!

Note: If you go to find the book at Lucky Bookstore, look on the display where all the other MTC books are. It’s an old-looking green paperback. The back and spine of the book are blank, and the front cover of the book says:

中國文化二十講
TWENTY LECTURES ON CHINESE CULTURE
修訂本

國立台灣師範大學
國語教學中心
1986

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As usual, I wrote this article all in one sitting without planning it out beforehand, and without going back to make sure I had said everything I wanted to. So while I was thinking about it today, I realized there were a few things I wanted to talk about that I forgot.

First, there are dictionaries. If you’re using a textbook, it will probably gloss all the words. However, if you ever want to read anything outside of your textbook (you do, right?), you’ll want a good dictionary. Not to mention, if you’re using Fuller’s book, he frequently gives “homework” that involves checking a large scholarly dictionary. Sometimes, however, a smaller dictionary will do just fine.

For learners, there are a few options. One of the most popular dictionaries is 古代漢語常用字字典 by 王力. It’s no coincidence that his name keeps popping up, by the way. He’s the man. This dictionary has something like 4500 of the most commonly used characters in Literary Chinese defined, with citations from the literature. 王力 also made another, bigger, dictionary, called 王力古漢語字典, which contains definitions, fanqie 反切 spellings, and citations for 10,000 characters. I’d recommend buying both. Keep the former in your backpack, and the latter on your desk.

These two will serve your purposes for the most part. For the times when you need something a little more heavy-duty, head to the library. The best thing out there is the 漢語大詞典, and its sister, the 漢語大字典. They are the most comprehensive dictionaries out there for Literary Chinese. If you can read Japanese, Morohashi Tetsuji’s 大漢和辞典 is also highly recommended.

Odds are, if you aren’t at a very high level in Chinese, you will have to use another dictionary to check your understanding of the above dictionaries. Pleco is great for this, because you can quickly write on the screen to look it up. Not to mention they will soon (hopefully) be releasing a Classical Chinese dictionary, 古漢語大詞典. It may be tempting to try to find a Chinese-English dictionary of Classical Chinese, like Mathews, but don’t! Mathews’ dictionary is no longer recommended by scholars because it not only mixes up usage from different periods, but it also has many outright errors. If you must have something and can read French, Couvreur’s Dictionnaire Classique De La Langue Chinoise is supposed to be decent, but I don’t have any personal experience with it. You’re much better off using a dictionary in Chinese.

Next, I’d like to address some confusion I’ve seen around the internet. There seems to be some idea out there that when you learn Literary Chinese, you have to learn the way it was pronounced. This can’t be further from the truth. You learn to read using modern Chinese pronunciation. Usually Mandarin, but of course it can be read in any Chinese language if you know the rules behind it. Sometimes you will encounter literary pronunciations of some characters, intended to be more conservative and represent the way the character should sound now based on its fanqie spelling. 他 is an example, as it is commonly pronounced tā in Mandarin, but its literary pronunciation is tuō. This practice seems to be more and more rare.

Some scholars do work on reconstructing the pronunciation of older incarnations of Chinese, but that’s a specialized field and is unnecessary unless you have specific interests in that subject. It does help to be familiar with some of the principles, because you will come across things like fanqie spellings and will need to understand how to deal with them, but don’t think that you need to be able to pronounce everything you read in Middle or Old Chinese. That’s simply not the case.

Another misconception I’ve seen is that in order to read Classical Chinese, you need to learn older forms of the characters. I don’t know if this stems from confusion over simplified and traditional characters or what, but it isn’t true. For some fields of research, an ability to read epigraphic materials using old forms (seal script, bronze script, etc.) is indispensable. However, most people will never need this, as interesting as it is. If this does interest you, I highly recommend this site.

For more information, I recommend taking a look at this site, specifically under “Dictionaries and reference works”. For more specialized dictionaries and information on other resources, Benjamin Elman’s page on Classical Historiography for Chinese History is excellent.

If you live in Taipei and are interested in this sort of stuff, drop me a line. I’ve been toying with the idea of starting a Literary Chinese study/meetup group while I’m here for the next couple years, if there’s enough interest. I think it would be great to have a group of people to keep each other accountable and motivated, not to mention the benefits of different people having differing viewpoints and interests in sinology.

That’s all (I hope)! Good luck with your studies!

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Fortunately, there are some pretty good options out there for people who want to self-study Literary Chinese. But first, let’s talk about that term. Is it Literary Chinese or Classical Chinese? Well, the two terms are usually interchangeable, but if you want to be precise with it, Classical Chinese (古文) refers to the Chinese of the Classical period, beginning in the Warring States period and lasting through the end of the Han dynasty. Literary Chinese (文言文) starts from the Han dynasty and continues up through the early 20th century, when it was officially replaced by 白話, or Vernacular Chinese, though some people did continue to use Literary Chinese after this point. But for the purposes of this article, I will just use the term Literary Chinese for both.

Now that that’s out of the way, how does one go about learning this language? Well, if your Chinese is good enough to read books for native speakers, you can’t go wrong with Wang Li’s Gudai Hanyu (王力古代漢語). But if you’re not to that level yet, you’ll want to use something in English.

In language schools in Taiwan, it seems there are a few books used for this. The most common is Harold Shadick’s A First Course in Literary Chinese. It’s been around forever (since 1968), and I guess most schools don’t see a reason to change. I suppose when it came out it was probably the best thing out there, since it was the first (or one of the first) books to attempt to teach a rigorous grammatical analysis of the language. Before that, I guess you were expected to learn via osmosis, just getting a good “feel” for the language. For anyone who has studied Latin, this is like the Wheelock’s of Literary Chinese. It’s a dinosaur, but it’s still used because teachers feel like they can get away with sticking with what’s comfortable when there are so few students studying it. But there’s better stuff available now.

The best thing out there written in from what I’ve gathered is Michael Fuller’s An Introduction to Literary Chinese. It’s much newer (1999, revised 2004), and takes into account recent scholarship into the grammar of Classical Chinese (“Classical” in its true sense, since most of the book’s materials come from that period). It makes frequent references to Edwin Pulleyblank’s Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar, so you may want to pick up a copy of that too for reference. There are other, more recent books than Fuller’s, but from what I’ve seen none of them are of quite the same caliber.

Fuller starts out with 8 Lessons teaching the basic structure of the language. He also includes a little about reading classical commentary and resources to use when you have questions, such as large scholarly dictionaries. The second part, Intermediate Texts, consists of 16 lessons. They are all, like the Beginning Texts, from classical sources like Confucius, Strategies of the Warring States, Mencius, etc. The Advanced Texts section consists of longer readings from classical and Jin dynasty authors. The fourth part is selections of Tang and Song dynasty prose and poetry. He gradually gives you more work to do as the book goes on, including bibliographic exercises (verify what work X means by using dictionary Y; find country A on the map in atlas B, etc.) and further reading. The book is excellent, and really makes you think about why each phrase means what it does, from both grammatical and contextual points of view.

After this point, you could theoretically move on to reading whatever strikes you, though I think it would be difficult. Fortunately, there’s a book that seems to be pretty good (my level isn’t there yet, but it looks good after a flip through) for advanced beginners. It’s called Literary Chinese for Advanced Beginners (convenient, right?), and it’s by the Inter-University Board for Chinese Language Studies. It contains readings from the classical period up through the Republican period, and is intended for students who have already completed a beginner’s textbook. The textbook it mentions specifically is Shadick’s (surprised?), but according to chrix at Chinese-forums it’s an appropriate book for someone who has finished Fuller, and preferably Pulleyblank’s Outline as well. The aim of the book is to take the student from such a level to being able to read the 古文觀止, and as such, contains nothing that’s in the 古文觀止 so as to avoid repetition.

So what’s the 古文觀止? It’s a book compiled during the Qing dynasty that sought to bring together more than 200 of the most exemplary prose writings from the Warring States period through the Ming dynasty, a span of around 2000 years. It’s something like a Norton’s Anthology for Chinese literature, and in fact it’s often called “A Survey of Classical Chinese” in English. Taiwanese students often study this in preparation for their college entry exams (and Taiwanese adults tend to groan when I mention it). It’s about the closest thing to a broad overview of Chinese literature as there is.

But it isn’t enough. There’s no poetry here, and Chinese poetry is, for many, the prime motivation for learning to read Literary Chinese. Even if it isn’t your main reason, you still ought to read some. The most famous poems are from the Tang and Song dynasties, although the (reputedly quite difficult) Classic of Poetry 詩經 is also worth looking at. There is a collection of 300 Tang poems compiled during the Qing (they like to compile stuff during the Qing) called 唐詩三百首, and a similar compilation of Song poems compiled in the 20th century called 宋詞三百首. However, there are more than 50,000 poems extant from the Tang dynasty alone, so rest assured that there is plenty for you from all periods, no matter what your poetic interests are.

You’ll likely want to read the Four Books and Five Classics 四書五經, which form the basis of Confucian thought and were read by pretty much every scholar for two millennia. The classics of Daoism, like the Dao De Jing 道德經, Zhuangzi 莊子, or Liezi 列子 may also pique your interest.

Also of interest are historical texts such as the Records of the Grand Historian 史記 and the Dynastic Histories. The latter consists of 3213 volumes and over 40 million words, according to Wikipedia, so rest assured you will never run out of reading material.

Of course there is plenty of other stuff to read. If your interests lean toward the religious, Chinese has a rich history of Buddhist texts. If you like strange stories, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio 聊齋志異 may be for you. If you like novels, the Four Great Classical Novels 四大名著 await. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms 三國演義, Water Margin 水滸傳, Journey to the West 西遊記, and Dream of the Red Chamber 紅樓夢 (which replaced The Plum in the Golden Vase 金瓶梅 on the list) are some of the longest and oldest novels in the world. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms has nearly 1000 characters and is nearly 1 million characters long. Again, you won’t soon run out of reading material here.

That’s something that strikes me over and over about Chinese – the sheer overwhelming vastness of it. Everything is so exaggeratedly huge. Take the Four Treasuries 四庫全書, for example. Compiled in the Qing dynasty (again with the compiling), Wikipedia says (although without a source) that it “is the largest collection of books in Chinese history and was probably the most ambitious editorial enterprise in the history of the world”. Even without a source, that probably isn’t much of a stretch. The Four Treasuries is a collection of books containing most of the major works from the Zhou to the Qing, and covers “all domains of academia”. It was published in 36,381 volumes, comprised of 2.3 million pages, and contains over 800 million characters. There were nearly 4000 scribes working on the project. It remains an important resource for anyone doing research on imperial China today.

But none of this matters if you don’t get started studying now. Buy Fuller and Pulleyblank, and then move on to Literary Chinese for Advanced Beginners. After that move on to 古文觀止, Tang and Song Poetry, The Four Books and Five Classics, etc. And onward and upward to whatever ignites your fire. This is a huge project, and it will take years to get a good overview of what’s out there, so get started!

Note: If you’re in Taiwan, you can buy the excellent 三民 edition of many of the works I mentioned here. These generally include Bopomofo annotation (learn to at least read it if you haven’t, it’s a useful tool that takes little investment), commentary, and a translation into modern Chinese. They’re excellent, and you can find good, clean, used copies at secondhand bookstores all over Taipei at a good discount. You can find Literary Chinese for Advanced Beginners at the Lucky Bookstore on Heping E. Road across from MTC, or at SMC’s bookstore off of Roosevelt Road.

So here’s what I’m doing, as far as my language studies. Like I’ve mentioned before on this blog, studying multiple books is essential if you want to progress at an optimal pace. Olle Linge wrote a great article on this, and I think you’ll recognize the source of some of my ideas there. Between now and the beginning of the Winter 2012 term, this is my plan for which textbooks to study in order to get me where I want to be.

Winter 2011 (now)

Class: PAVC III (almost finished)  PAVC IV (starting soon)
Self-study: Taiwan Today, Far East Everyday Chinese IIB (finish both)
文言文: An Introduction to Literary Chinese (finish Intermediate, start Advanced)

Spring 2012 (beginning March)

Class: PAVC IV (finish) and Far East III (first half)
Self-study: Talks on Chinese Culture (an ICLP text), Chinese with Newspaper I*
文言文: An Introduction to Literary Chinese (finish Advanced), Literary Chinese for Advanced Beginners (a text intended to take you from post-intro level to 古文觀止 level)

*I don’t expect Newspaper I to take the whole term, since I’m pretty much at that level already. If I’m able to finish it quickly, I want to study Far East III on my own in hopes of not having to take the second half of the book in the Summer.

Summer 2012 (beginning June)

Class: PAVC V (hoping not to have to take the last few chapters of Far East III)
Self-study: Chinese with Newspaper II and III
文言文: 四書, 古文觀止

Fall 2012 (beginning August)

Class: Level 6 class*
Self-study: The Independent Reader*, possibly China’s Peril and Promise
文言文: 四書, 古文觀止

*The most popular Level 6 class is Newspaper I, but since I will have already studied it I want to take a different class. It will depend on what’s offered. If I’m able to skip this level and go straight on to Thought and Society because of that, that would be ideal, but we’ll see. If I take Thought and Society, I will probably take The Independent Reader in the Winter instead of self-study now.

Winter 2012 (beginning December)

Class: Thought and Society (if I take this in the Fall, I’ll take The Independent Reader)
Self-study: Undecided so far, hopefully reading Chinese newspapers and history book
文言文: 古文觀止, maybe some Tang and Song poetry or something else too

Of course, I’m leaving some room for changing plans. I may have planned to do too much. I’m able to work on four books at a time right now (one for class, two on the side, and one for 文言文), but I may not be able to continue doing so once I’ve reached a higher level. It won’t be a huge deal if I need to extend my “deadline” into the Spring term of 2013, since I’ll still be here and taking classes, and the pickings are extremely slim indeed when you get above the classes I’ve mentioned here. I also would like to make some time to take a calligraphy class and a Taiwanese class while I’m here, and I’ve been encouraged by some professors back home to contact one of the professors here in Taipei about auditing a course, so I may find that I have too much on my plate.

I also (can we say over-achiever?) want to get back to studying French and German, since I’ll need to be able to read in those languages for my PhD program and I’d like to not have to worry about that while I’m taking grad school courses. Fortunately learning to read is easier than learning to converse, and that’s all I’ll need in those languages. So anyway, I may (and likely will) end up having to alter my plans as I go along. I may also find that some of these books overlap too much and are thus unnecessary. It’s hard to know that right now, but I’ll know by the time I get to that point.

I’ll be posting monthly goals in the Chinese-forums thread I mentioned before, and maybe I’ll be talking about that here, too. For now, my goals for January are:

Taiwan Today: finish Chapter 9 (1.5 chapters per week, since it’s fairly easy going)
Far East III: Finish Chapter 22 (1 chapter per week)
Fuller: Finish Chapter 20 (2 chapters per week)

I have no control over how fast my class goes, but I think we should be able to finish PAVC III this month, or come within a few days of finishing at least.

So there it is. I know this is a long article (or long-winded, if you prefer), but hopefully it will help someone out there. Big, far off goals are useless, and without good planning they’re bound to fail. Breaking the year down into chunks (terms at school for me), and breaking those chunks down into smaller chunks (months) will make it much easier to get there, and make the goal seem less overwhelming. As they say (my teachers here in Taiwan would kill me for this), 好好學習，天天向上.

With the new year coming up, I’ve been thinking, as I always do this time of year, about my goals for Chinese for the next year. I don’t really like the idea of “resolutions”, because they’re always really cheesy, vague, and meant to be broken. Not to mention, I’ve always thought January 1 was a fairly arbitrary time to set goals and have thought it ridiculous when people get excited in October about how they’re going to do great stuff in the next year – why not get to it immediately?

Setting specific goals and thinking more about the process seems to be a better way to go about it. If your goal by 31 December is to complete a certain textbook, that’s great. But it isn’t enough if you don’t think about how you’re going to get there. A year is a long time. Do you need to finish a chapter per week in order to get there? And when will you do your studying? How will you keep yourself accountable? I recommend that, for your Chinese-related goals at least, you post in the Aims and Objectives thread over at Chinese-forums, and subscribe to it so you get an email every time someone posts in it. At the beginning of each month, people check in and report on their progress, so this way, you’ll be reminded each month to do the same. I’ve done this for the past couple of years (with varying degrees of success). By doing this, you are not only keeping yourself accountable, but you also have the opportunity to change some goals if you need to. A year is a long time, and sometimes things change.

I’m setting pretty high goals this time around, but what with being in Taiwan and nearly all of my time available for studying, I figured now’s the time to be ambitious. One thing I’m doing that I haven’t done before is setting monthly goals. I’ll be adjusting these as I go based on how I do with them, but ideally they’ll add up to me accomplishing my goals for the year.

My goals fall into a few main categories: Modern Chinese, Classical/Literary Chinese, and Grad School applications/preparation. But really my goals all point to the last category. That’s why I’m here, after all. For grad school, I’ll have to be able to read very well in both modern and literary Chinese. I’ll need to be able to understand academic papers relevant to my field, and to do research in primary source material. I’ll also need a solid command of the spoken language, not least of all because that’s the only way I’ll be competitive for assistantships and fellowships in grad school.

So here are the end goals, and afterward I’ll talk about how I intend to reach them.

Modern Spoken Chinese

By the Winter term of 2012 (which starts in December), I want to be taking Thought and Society 《思想與社會》, which is an advanced textbook for spoken Chinese. I’ve heard nothing but good things about this book; it is one of the core books at ICLP and the most popular Level 7 book at MTC. By the end you’re expected to be able to converse on things like Confucianism’s influence on modern Chinese society, or the problem of the declining population rate in Taiwan. The focus, therefore, is on formal, academic speech rather than on colloquial everyday chit-chat (which by that point should be no problem).

Depending on how quickly I progress until then, there is a possibility that I can take this course in the Fall, which would be ideal. But I will still be happy if I can take it in the Winter.

Modern Written Chinese

This is more of a priority to me than speech, since my reading skills will need to be very high in order to be successful in conducting research. I’m studying textbooks on the side of my classes (which are more speech-focused at this point) to help me with reading. By the end of this year I want to have begun working through The Independent Reader 《從精讀到泛讀》on my own. Or, if I’m able to take Thought and Society in the Fall, I want to take The Independent Reader in the Winter, which again is ideal, but I’ll be happy as long as I get to that point in my studies by the end of the year.

Classical/Literary Chinese

This will all be self-study this year, unless I have the money to afford a tutor from MTC or ICLP. My goal is to read a good portion of the Four Books 四書 and the Guwen Guanzhi 古文觀止, which is essentially a survey of Classical Chinese literature, this year. The idea is that while I’m here I want to both get comfortable with reading Literary Chinese, and get a good overview of the breadth of Chinese writing before I get to grad school and specialize. I’ll need outstanding ability in Literary Chinese during grad school both for my research and for things like TAships. Plus, I really enjoy reading this stuff, and it does help to a certain extent with my reading ability in modern Chinese.

Grad School Goals

Right now the plan is to begin applying to grad schools this coming Fall, in order to be able to start in Fall 2013. In order to do that I need to, once and for all, nail down what period I want to focus on. My heart has always belonged to Early China, and especially the early development of the writing system. However, I have become more and more fascinated by late Imperial China, specifically the Ming and early Qing period. I’d love to learn Manchu in order to be able to participate in the work that’s being done on the Manchu archives from the Qing dynasty. But back on the other hand, I know a bit more about Early China, have been in touch with some of the top academics in that field, and have gotten some great feedback and encouragement from them. That isn’t to say that I can’t get in touch with professors in Late Imperial China like I have with Early China, but there will be a bit higher barrier to entry there.

So anyway, I need to figure that out. I also need to get in touch with the professors I’d like to study under. I have a writing sample, but I need to rework it. I may even scrap it and start on something new, though that isn’t ideal since it will cut into my study time significantly. I also brought several Chinese history books with me (mostly focused on Ming-Qing history so I can fill in the gaps in my knowledge there), and I want to finish them this year and then hopefully go on to read some more.

Other

I also need to find some students to tutor. Money’s a little tight so that would help. I can only spare about 8 hours a week to do this, but if you know of a website or some other resource that will help me find students, please let me know. I also want to start playing chess again, because I enjoy it and it helps to clear my mind, which normally is racing from the time I wake up until I go to bed.

So there it is. As you can see, like most New Year’s resolutions they’re all big goals with few specifics about how to accomplish them. They’re useless this way. How can I possibly hope to be able to read 古文觀止 when I’m not even half finished with Fuller’s Introduction to Literary Chinese? The two are pretty far removed from each other, and without intermediate goals linking the two, 古文觀止 is an impossible goal. Similarly, my conversation level right now is “Senators have a 6-year term, and every two years two-thirds of them come up for re-election.” How am I supposed to get from that to “Although Lao Tzu professed the rejection of all institutions and the development of society along its own natural course, he certainly did not advocate oblivion to worldly affairs. Self-cultivation, if achieved, would be sufficient”? That’s a big jump.

But since I have a tendency to keep typing and typing, this has turned into an over 2500 word article. I’ll spare you and save the specifics for the next article, where I’ll break my goals down into chunks corresponding to the terms at my school. I’ll also talk about how I plan to make goals each month in order to keep me on track and make adjustments to the plan as I go through the year.