Welcome to Chinese Literature series. In this book, we will discover the novel Water Margin《水浒传》written by Shi Naian (施耐庵, 1296-1370). The novel is one of the Four Great Classical Chinese Novels (中国古典四大名著之一).

The Chinese Literature series is dedicated to helping Mandarin Chinese learners remember Chinese characters, words, idioms, phrases, and thereby improve Chinese reading skills. In this series, we will discover lives of some of the most important novels of Chinese literature (中国文学史上的重要著作), including the Four Great Classical Novels (中国古典四大名著). These literary masterpieces are extremely popular in China, and around the world. The books in Chinese Literature series contain numerous lessons in Mandarin Chinese. We start with a brief introduction of the book in the preface (前言) in Chinese and pinyin, a bit detailed introduction to the treatise (in English), and continue to dig the corresponding masterpiece in different chapters. Each book contains 7 to 10 simple chapters made of easy Chinese sentences. For the readers' convenience, a comprehensive vocabulary has been provided at the beginning of each chapter. The pinyin for the Chinese text is provided after the main text. Further, to enforce a deeper Chinese learning, the English interpretation of the Chinese text has been deliberately excluded from the books. This would help the readers think deeply about the contents the way native Chinese do! In order to help the students of Mandarin Chinese remember important characters, words, long words, idioms, etc., these entities have been purposely repeated throughout the book, and across the books in the series. Taken together, the books in Chinese Literature series will tremendously help readers learn Mandarin Chinese, while improving the Chinese reading skills.

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