My goal was to understand every word, every idiom, and every unfamiliar character, getting as close to a full understanding of the text as I possibly could. My friends at Peking University were all raving about it, so I decided to read the book myself – and I mean really read it. So usually I would give up in despair after a frustrating few paragraphs of: “Here, Second-Elder-Sister, quickly take this (something) that our father (something) to Old Chen when his (something) was so tragically (something, something) during the Japanese (something), and never speak of this (something) to a soul (something something), I beg you!” You know the feeling.Īt that time Qian Zhongshu’s famous novel Weicheng 《围城》 was having a revival of popularity, partly due to a TV series adaptation of the novel. There were so many unfamiliar characters on virtually every line of the text that there was no way I could look them all up. Yet reading Chinese literature was virtually impossible. I had fairly good spoken Mandarin and a fair sense for the written language. This would be a rather embarrassing admission for a fourth-year student of, say, Spanish, but back then this was a pretty common situation for us learners of Chinese. In fact, I had not read any Chinese book in its entirety – the task was just too daunting. Two decades ago, after I had studied Chinese for about four years, I suddenly realized that I had never read a novel in Chinese. In this article, he provides both a background for those who started learning Chinese recently, as well as an in-depth discussion about what has changed and what it means for learners today. David has previously contributed to my ask-the-experts article about learning Chinese grammar. He’s currently Academic Director at CET Chinese Studies at Beijing Capital Normal University. in Chinese Studies from the University of Michigan, with a major in Chinese Linguistics and Philosophy. This is a guest article by David Moser about the incredible changes the digital age has brought to learners of Chinese all over the world.
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