Graded Chinese Reader 500 Words - Selected Abridged Chinese Contemporary Short Stories

The indication is 500 words but there is plenty of words beyond HSK3 and the stories are not well balanced (too many new words to enjoy the reading) from vocabulary point of view. Also, some basic words can be explained/translated whilst other, from higher HSK levels are not.The pinyin interwoven with Chinese characters is also disturbing - would prefer to have them separated (despite having the 'reading-ruler' which is bit clumsy to use.Good audio and some stories themselves are not too bad once you get over the vocabulary.

This did require some dictionary work, and some of the stories were easier to read than others. It is good that in this series, those expressions that are extra to the 500 words are well explained, often with a sentence to illustrate usage.

Great Chinese reader with very useful vocabulary, right speaking speed and beautiful illustrations. It makes it a pleasure to learn Mandarin. What I like the most about this reader is the grid you can place on the paper to cover the pinyin. It's great.

I bought 'Graded Chinese Reader 500 Words' as a way to practice Chinese at my level outside of my textbooks and classes. I found it nice to read the collection of short stories that used the grammar and vocab that I had previously learned to help reinforce them. They were usually between 5-10 pages in length, which meant they could be finished in one sitting if you wished to. Other than the length of the stories, I found the appeal of this book to be that it included both pinyin and characters, with a divider so that you could block out the pinyin unless you needed it.Many of the stories were quite interesting, and often introduced concepts from Chinese culture that helped to keep you engaged when reading otherwise simple stories. However, due to the simplicity of the language available some of the stories were either highly predictable, or glossed over sections that you would normally want to be expanded upon. A key aspect of these books (which you may consider a strength or a weakness depending on your goals) is that the grammar used is not typical of written Chinese, and my native Chinese friends have told me the style seems both spoken style, and like a foreigner wrote them. The positive to this is that for a beginner student this makes it easier to understand, and requires less knowledge of complex grammar to read.There was also a dictionary in the back of the book which was helpful, although it didn't include all of the words used in the book. This meant that I still ended up using my phone to look up the words I didn't know.Overall, this book is a helpful learning tool for a beginner/intermediate level student at around HSK 3 level who is looking for an accessible way to practice their Chinese. The stories themselves are not always the most exciting reads, but they're good enough for the purpose of practicing.