"This new intermediate-level textbook includes chapters 39 through 50 with vocabulary, grammar, drills and text relating to the following topics: courtship, the rote of men and women in society, career objectives, traditions of the Spring Festival, the writings of Lu Xun, bargaining for discounts, interviewing for a job, part time work, family planning in China, visiting a traditional Chinese doctor, China's launch of the Shenzhou 5 spacecraft."

This Festschrift is dedicated to the former Director and Editor-in-chief of the Monumenta Serica Institute in Sankt Augustin (Germany), Roman Malek, S.V.D. in recognition of his scholarly commitment to China. The two-volume work contains 40 articles by his academic colleagues, companions in faith, confreres, as well as by the staff of the Monumenta Serica Institute and the China-Zentrum e.V. (China Center). The contributions in English, German and Chinese pay homage to the jubilarian’s diverse research interests, covering the fields of Chinese Intellectual History, History of Christianity in China, Christianity in China Today, Other Religions in China, Chinese Language and Literature as well as the Encounter of Cultures.

At long last the approach that has helped thousands of learners memorize Japanese kanji has been adapted to help students with Chinese characters. Book 1 of Remembering Simplified Hanzi covers the writing and meaning of the 1,000 most commonly used characters in the simplified Chinese writing system, plus another 500 that are best learned at an early stage. (Book 2 adds another 1,500 characters for a total of 3,000.) Of critical importance to the approach found in these pages is the systematic arranging of characters in an order best suited to memorization. In the Chinese writing system, strokes and simple components are nested within relatively simple characters, which can, in turn, serve as parts of more complicated characters and so on. Taking advantage of this allows a logical ordering, making it possible for students to approach most new characters with prior knowledge that can greatly facilitate the learning process. Guidance and detailed instructions are provided along the way. Students are taught to employ "imaginative memory" to associate each character’s component parts, or "primitive elements," with one another and with a key word that has been carefully selected to represent an important meaning of the character. This is accomplished through the creation of a "story" that engagingly ties the primitive elements and key word together. In this way, the collections of dots, strokes, and components that make up the characters are associated in memorable fashion, dramatically shortening the time required for learning and helping to prevent characters from slipping out of memory.

China as a place of isolation hiding from the world behind a great wall – an image which has become exposed as a pejorative cliché. However, The opposite is the case: The country has been immersed in transnational and transcultural exchange for centuries. China was, is and will be part of a global context. This volume sheds new light on the dimensions of China’s continuous engagement with the world: as an inspiration for European garden designers, as a participant in global dialogue on culture, law and innovative technology, as a destination for academics, business leaders and refugees, but also – and increasingly so – as a powerful political actor in Asia and throughout the world.