I Can Read That: A Traveler’s Introduction to Chinese Characters

A fun book to learn a few Chinese characters, December 12, 2001

For the most part, Chinese is really two languages – a written one and a spoken one. One really cannot “sound out” written Chinese Characters, like they can with English. Most books for travelers to China dwell on the spoken language. This is actually a very good idea, because it helps you communicate and get around. But this book is different and fun, because it concentrates on Chinese characters which are beautiful and interesting.

I lived in the city of Shenyang, China for almost a year and a half. I dealt with a lot of Chinese people and Westerners that had been there for varying lengths of time. The Westerners had varying levels of oral Chinese language skills, but it was very rare for me to find a Westerner who knew how to read Chinese. The Westerners that I knew who could read Chinese were for the most part long time scholors on the topic or they learned it from their Chinese relatives.

I read this book, and learned most of the characters in it. I could not even come close to reading a magazine or newspaper, even those for children. But, I knew more Chinese characters than 95% of the Westerners that I knew in China. Most of these foreigners would be impressed when I could read the little I did. For most of the Chinese people I met, I was the only Westerner that they ever met who could read even a few characters. I’d figure a sign out, and they could not believe it. This skill was a great conversation topic, and I soon learned several other characters in the conversations that I had with the locals.

For the most part, this book is not required reading for someone who travels to China. In places where a lot of Westerners travel, many signs are in English, or pin-yin, or “Chinglish” (poor translations from Chinese to English.) But when I went to places less traveled, I can tell you that it was nice to be able to read the sign on the restroom door so I did not get into an embarrassing situation. (I had plenty of other embarrassing experiences without going into the wrong public toilet.)

I highly recommend the book. Have fun!

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A really useful and fun book, May 7, 1999

My wife and I got a copy of “I Can Read That” before a recent trip to China. While the complexities of a tonal language were more than we could grasp in the weeks before our trip, Julie Sussman’s very intelligent and easy little book let us have some idea of what we were looking at by reading signs when we were on the ground in China. You can learn to read enough characters to find the right rest room, figure out what is a street name and what is a business, and many other useful things. We were able to find the right gates at Chinese ariports because we could read the characters for Xian and Shanghai. I was amazed at what someone with no gift for languages was able usefully learn with a very modest investment in studying this little book. It was fun, too.

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