Stories from China is a series of extensive reading textbooks compiled by local Chinese language teachers for intermediate/advanced Chinese students or self-learners.

 

This series introduces Chinese culture to foreigners and improves their Chinese reading skills while teaching Chinese culture. The textbooks use stories to present vividly and specifically the glorious traditional Chinese cultural points that foreigners are interested in.

 

This series is divided into 10 volumes, including volumes of history, geography, folk customs, myths and legends, traditional culture, traditional festivals, arts, Chinese language, literature, celebrities, etc. Each volume uses 10 stories to discuss a cultural topic.

 

The volume of geography includes ten aspects, introducing China’s location and administrative division, landform and terrain, population and ethnic groups, climate and culture, famous mountains, the Yangtze River and the Yellow River, Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the Inner Mongolia Grassland, Suzhou, Hangzhou and Guilin. Besides these, there are also cultural notes such as the inter-city railway, hydropower stations on the Yangtze River, Naadam Fair, Songkran (Water-Splashing) Festival, Ice Sculpture Shows of Harbin, Shaolin Temple, Qinghai-Tibet Railway, and China’s top ten tourist resorts, etc.

Liu Meiru received her master and PhD degrees in Chinese Studies from Portland State University of America. Being the Professor of Chinese Language and Culture and the Dean of the Confucius Institute at Portland State University, Prof. Liu has more than 30 years of Chinese language teaching and Chinese culture promotion experience and has written many Chinese textbooks for foreigners.

 

Lu Lina received her master degree in Cultural Communication and PhD degree in Education from Portland State University of America. She is now the President of Chinese Language Teachers Association of the Oregon State. She has been teaching Chinese and the comparative studies of Chinese and American culture in many American and Canadian universities since 1986.