Customer Reviews

Dictionary of 1000 Chinese Proverbs (Hippocrene Bilingual Proverbs)

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Comprehensive and useful book for mastering great phrases and sayings. I appreciated the characters being written in the back and the GREAT indexing (both English and Chinese). It would have been nice to have tone marks over the Pinyin, but the characters make up for it.

This book comprises of proverbs and vernaculars. Some phrases are regional. The proverbs were organized based on their Mandarin Pin-yin pronounciation. However, for those who do not know Chinese writing or pin-yin, this book is not quite helpful if you just want to understand Chinese proverbs. However, if you know Chinese and Mandarin pin-yin, you will find this book somewhat helpful. Also, the English index helps.

As for me, who know how to read some Chinese (and do not know pin-yin), but would like to know the definitions of some proverbs, I find it difficult to look through the Chinese characters written in the back in order to find a proverb. Therefore, if the characters were typed and organized by strokes, that would be more helpful.

Distills the poetic wisdom of the ages into a lifeless list of bland exortations.

There are books available which do preserve and present the beauty of oriental thought, but I am afraid this is not one of them.

Try the book by Guy Zona, instead.

Disappointingly banal. This book reads as if it were written by a chinese-speaking lawyer. Verdict: don't waste your money.