{"id":5155,"date":"2014-04-21T14:09:28","date_gmt":"2014-04-21T13:09:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saporedicina.com\/english\/?p=5155"},"modified":"2020-12-22T04:33:20","modified_gmt":"2020-12-22T03:33:20","slug":"mandarin-companion-novels-in-chinese-for-beginners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saporedicina.com\/english\/mandarin-companion-novels-in-chinese-for-beginners\/","title":{"rendered":"Mandarin Companion: Novels in Chinese that even a beginner can read"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mandarin<\/p>\n

Click here to discover what Chinese courses
that we recommend at the moment!<\/a><\/div>\n

When Jared Turner, the co-founder of Mandarin Companion<\/a>, sent an email to me, I’ve went to check his website right away.<\/p>\n

Why? Because, as you can read on the headline above, they offer an elegant solution to a difficult problem. No, I’m sorry to disappoint you but they don’t solve the pollution issue that is affecting China. <\/p>\n

But if you’re learning Chinese and you feel frustrated…<\/p>\n

A big problem when you begin to study Chinese Mandarin<\/h2>\n

What’s the biggest problem for people that start to study Chinese? What’s the biggest obstacle to become fluent (whatever “fluent” means to you)?<\/p>\n

You may differ with me, but in my opinion is the fact that everyday Chinese sources – newspapers, novels, movies, – are so difficult to understand and, after a few trials, you give up ’cause it’s just too boring.<\/strong> <\/p>\n

“What the hell, I watched this movie three times<\/a> and I still can’t get who is the assassin,<\/em>” is a common feeling among Mandarin’s students.<\/p>\n

When it comes down to movies, using English subtitles is a partial – and acceptable – solution. If this is what you’re looking for, then FluentU<\/a> may be a good starting point.<\/p>\n

But if you want to read a novel then you have few options. Well, as far as I know until some months ago you had no decent options whatsoever (unless you’ve at least a HSK5 level). <\/p>\n

Why at least HSK5? Because I can write and know the meaning of almost all the characters of the HSK1-HSK4 lists and I’m still stuck. Give me a Chinese newspaper<\/a> and I won’t get much out of it. <\/p>\n

And Mandarin Companion offers a solution to this problem. This is the reason for which, after almost a year<\/a>, I took the time to write an article about Chinese language.<\/p>\n

How does Mandarin Companion work?<\/h2>\n

The idea is quite simple. The books are classified by level of difficulty. All the books that belong to level 1 only contain 300 basic Chinese characters. This corresponds, more or less, to an HSK2 level<\/a> that, I guess, anybody can reach in about six months of full-time study. Unless you’re studying on Sborto’s class<\/a>, \u00e7a va sans dire. <\/p>\n

This is an awesome concept because it means that beginners Chinese students can now read (and understand) a short novel in Chinese language.<\/p>\n

Consider that, even if you could already find in the market books in Chinese that use a limited number of characters in order to ease the comprehension, as far as I know the choice was limited to books for children.<\/p>\n

Here the titles offered by Mandarin Companion so far:<\/p>\n