Can I Dance with You? (Chinese Breeze Graded Reader Series, Level 1: 300-word level) (Mandarin Chinese Edition) Paperback – Audiobook, December 31, 2008

When I was about a month in to my lessons it was impossible to make anything of this book. I really found myself wishing there was an easy dictionary or english translation so that I could easily find the words I did not understand. For an english speaker learning chinese I found it basically impossible to look up words in an chinese to english dictionary, finding the correct radical was an hour long adventure to just look up a single word.I think that this book would require several months of lessons before I could make much of it. I was NOT able to try their CD as I don't even own a CD player anymore, except in my car. My laptop doesn't have a CD drive. I could have put it in my DVD player I suppose but it doesn't seem fair to monopolize the TV while I read :)All in all, I would probably not recommend this purchase. It did not add much value for me.

This is one of the best Chinese Readers I've found. A decent story that can really immerse you in the language. Some ways of expressing situations are a bit odd and cumbersome. I've read it with my tutor and they agree that some expressions are not natural, but I think perhaps that was on purpose as its a level 1 beginner book. I can't wait to read the next in the series.

The only issue is that the disc that came with the book doesn't work.

I recommend this short story as a great practice for the Mandarin language. The choice of words is easy to read, the story has some appeal, and it makes for a light read while practicing your language skills.

This product arrived on time and as described. I am very happy with my purchase. I look forward to additional orders.

As a high school Chinese teacher, I have used the "Chinese Breeze" series in class, and this review is intended for all the Level 1 (red) and Level 2 (green) books in the series, which in fact are the only ones I have seen. This series is a much needed addition to the range of materials for teaching beginning Chinese. The stories are engaging, capable of maintaining student interest at a high level, full of current vocabulary which is constantly reinforced, and offers the teacher a wide variety of content. Words likely not to be known by beginning students are glossed throughout the text. The series is very effective in providing the type of reading experience so necessary to cementing character recognition and vocabulary usage in the student's mind, and I highly recommend them.There is one caveat, however, and it is a significant one. These first two levels are billed as "beginner" material in the reading series, and so they are. But the word "beginner" is a highly relative one and should not be understood as "easy" except, again, in a relative way. These readers cannot be tackled at very early stages of Chinese study (e.g., after only one semester of college Chinese, or a year of high school Chinese). They require a vocabulary level above the true beginner and a basic mastery of Chinese syntax not normally acquired until later on. At the secondary level, these books make a great addition to 3rd- and 4th-year study, but are too difficult for 1st- and 2nd-year students. The use of the particle "de" in creating dependent clauses must already be understood, as should be the more common uses of "le", the continuing action particle "zhe", directional complements and, to a lesser extent, resultative verbs. Even the "ba" construction is introduced in the Level 1 texts, and is much more frequent in Level 2. In short, while these texts hugely reinforce the above grammatical points, they do in fact presume at least a certain student familiarity with them. Trying to teach these concepts for the first time as they occur in the text can be frustrating and significantly slow down the time it takes to actually read the book, thus impacting student enjoyment and sense of accomplishment. The vocabulary, too, while basic, often includes words not likely to be familiary to the "beginning" student, so that vocabulary lists need to be prepared by the teacher and taught, at least passively, before tackling the text for best results. In a word, the instructor should understand the term "beginner" in the sense of the first steps taken in reading real Chinese stories beyond the level of simple dialogues and narratives found in introductory texts. What the "Chinese Breeze" series does, it does admirably, but it is only basic relative to real and authentic Chinese for those who have already achieved significant mastery of the language. For the true beginner--and this means 1st- and 2nd-year students--the material is beyond their scope of mastery.Still, for what it does, it is a wonderful series that I highly recommend.

Fang Xiaoying is the "qingchun" (pure and innocent) sort, except that somehow she ends up sleeping with a guy scarcely an hour after meeting him. Capping off their one-night stand, the police show up at her apartment, claiming that the guy (Gao Liang) has embezzled 10 million yuan from the bank he works for! Gao flees; now Fang (in the open) and Gao (in the shadows) need to work out what happened and track down the real culprits, if they are ever to get together again. Fortunately, Gao is a computer whiz and experienced hacker tracker, while Fang is smart and loyal. Unfortunately, someone (or ones) may be trying to kill them.This is, I think, one of the harder of the Chinese Breeze 300-word books. There's a certain amount of computer terminology introduced, and Gao's reasoning out of the hacks can get a little involved. Of course, it's still not that hard, but you might want to start with one of the other books (e.g.,  Wrong, Wrong, Wrong! (Chinese Breeze 300-word Level) with CD  or  I Really Want to Find Her (Chinese Breeze 300-word Level) with CD ) first. Also, the whole sleeping-together business, while hardly graphic, might give pause to someone wanting to use this in a high school class.Still and all, though, it's a lot of story to put in a 300-character vocabulary. Highly recommended.As with all the books in the series, this comes with a set of brief reading comprehension quizzes at the end, and a CD which features two readings of the story - one at normal (native) conversational pace, and one slower. Note that these are MP3 CDs and also this one, at least is mini (80 mm) format.