Chinese Culture

Out with the old and in with the new! It’s time to celebrate Chinese New Year! Clean the house. Have a feast with relatives. Watch fireworks and dragon dances. Make paper lanterns. Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, is a celebration of new beginnings.

After years of hard work, Mia Tang finally gets to go on vacation with her family - to China! A total dream come true! Mia can't wait to see all her cousins and grandparents again, especially her cousin Shen. As she roams around Beijing, witnessing some of the big changes China's going through, Mia thinks about the changes in her own life.

In this fully revised and updated third edition, Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom and Maura Elizabeth Cunningham provide cogent answers to urgent questions regarding the world's newest superpower and offer a framework for understanding China's meteoric rise from developing country to superpower. Framing their answers through the historical legacies that largely define China's present-day trajectory, Wasserstrom and Cunningham introduce listeners to the Chinese Communist Party, the building boom in Shanghai, and the environmental fallout of rapid Chinese industrialization.

Enjoy this single-voice audio recording of the Contemporary Chinese Bible, which offers a concise “thought-for-thought" translation. By focusing on delivering a clear rendition of the Bible’s stories and concepts, the Contemporary Chinese Bible in the Mandarin dialect offers a better...

The life of Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen Buddhism, has, with the passing of time, been magnified to the scale of myth, turning history into the stuff of legend. Known as the First Patriarch, Bodhidharma brought Zen from South India into China in 500 CE, changing the country forever. In Tracking Bodhidharma, Andrew Ferguson recreates the path of Bodhidharma, traveling through China to the places where the First Patriarch lived and taught. This sacred trail takes Ferguson deep into ancient China.

The battle continues in this silkpunk fantasy as science and destiny collide against the will of the gods in this final installment in the epic Dandelion Dynasty series from the “genius” (Elizabeth Bear, Hugo Award­–winning author of the Eternal Sky series) Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy...

Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture illustrates how the spaces between tiles and the moments between games have fostered distinct social cultures in the United States. This mass-produced game crossed the Pacific, creating waves of popularity over the 20th century. Annelise Heinz narrates the history of this game to show how it has created a variety of meanings, among them American modernity, Chinese American heritage, and Jewish American women's culture.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a brilliantly realistic journey back to an era of Chinese history that is as deeply moving as it is sorrowful. With the period detail and deep resonance of Memoirs of a Geisha, this lyrical and emotionally charged novel delves into one of the most mysterious of...

Listen to everyday words and phrases in Mandarin Chinese, then repeat, practise and refine! A relaxing way to pick up the language. Follow the words using the free booklet, also available at: collinsdictionary.com/resources Covers the words you need for modern life in China with topics on home...

By listening to these specially composed melodies with their rhythmic repetitions of Mandarin and English a few times, you pick up over 200 essential words and phrases that will not just be on the tip of your tongue, but will be burned deeply into your long-term memory in next to no time.

For the first time, an award-winning Harvard professor shares his wildly popular course on classical Chinese philosophy, showing you how ancient ideas—like the fallacy of the authentic self—can guide you on the path to a good life today. Why is a course on ancient Chinese philosophers one of...

We have compiled over 100 conversational Chinese stories for beginners along with their translations, allowing new Chinese speakers to possess the necessary tools to begin studying how to set a meeting, rent a car, or tell a doctor that they don’t feel well. We’re not wasting time here with conversations that don’t go anywhere: If you want to know how to solve real-life problems (while learning a ton of Chinese along the way), this book is for you!

Many people are curious about China, yet somehow that curiosity has not translated into a better understanding of this remarkable culture and its countless stories. China Simplified books explore the language, history, and more in quick-listen, engaging formats making the country and culture super-accessible for a busy world; "untangling the noodles" for you!

A profound and searching exploration of the herbs, foodways, and land-based medicines of Lebanon and Canaan—a deep invitation to remember and reconnect to our roots amid displacement and in diaspora. Herbalist and author Layla K. Feghali shares a nuanced and layered cultural history of the...

An intimate and revelatory account of two generations of students in China’s heartland, by an author who has observed the country’s tumultuous changes over the past quarter century More than two decades after teaching English during the early part of China’s economic boom, an experience...

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a brilliantly realistic journey back to an era of Chinese history that is as deeply moving as it is sorrowful. With the period detail and deep resonance of Memoirs of a Geisha, this lyrical and emotionally charged novel delves into one of the most mysterious of...

If you have not studied Taiwanese Mandarin and simply want to master basic phrases useful for travel without getting into the details of grammar, this is the series for you. These short and effective audio lessons will also teach you travel tips and the "do's" and "don'ts" from our experienced host. This is not a vocabulary builder with just words and their translations. Unlike other audiobooks, we actually teach Taiwanese Mandarin and Taiwanese culture. Each lesson is taught by a professional, bilingual teacher.

“This powerful and meticulously argued book reveals that immigration crackdowns … [have] always been about saving and protecting the racist idea of a white America.” —Ibram X. Kendi, award-winning author of Four Hundred Souls and Stamped from the Beginning “A damning inquiry into the...

Shanghai, 1912. Violet Minturn is the privileged daughter of the American madam of the city's most exclusive courtesan house. But when the Ching dynasty is overturned, Violet is separated from her mother in a cruel act of chicanery and forced to become a "virgin courtesan." Half-Chinese and half-American, Violet grapples with her place in the worlds of East and West - until she is able to merge her two halves, empowering her to become a shrewd courtesan who excels in the business of seduction and illusion, though she still struggles to understand who she is.

China expert Robert Spalding reveals the shocking success China has had infiltrating American institutions and compromising our national security. The media often suggest that Russia poses the greatest threat to America's national security, but the real danger lies farther east. While those in...