Oh, China! was first published in 1997 and has been adopted by many institutions.In the process of using this book, we discovered a few errors and a few insufficientexplanations, which we have now taken the opportunity to correct and append in thisrevised edition.

The main focus of this revision has been rearranging and reformatting the layoutof each page. Originally, traditional and simplified character texts were juxtaposedon adjacent pages, with vocabulary words following. The revised edition juxtaposes thesimplified character text and vocabulary words on adjacent pages and includes thetraditional character text at the end of each lesson. This change makes it much moreconvenient for students to prepare the lesson, while at the same time it reflects thegrowing trend of using simplified characters in international Chinese languageeducation.

In the original edition, each lesson contained a table showing the strokes ofChinese characters, in which we added handwritten Arabic numbers depicting the strokeorder. However, in the case of characters with a greater number of strokes, it was difficultto see the actual stroke order. In the revised edition, we have selected a certain number ofnew vocabulary words for each lesson and provided the English glosses for eachindividual character, as well as relevant compounds. We have completely omitted thenumbers depicting stroke order. We decided to make this change because, in the past fewyears, the development of the Internet has provided students with Web sites containinganimated illustrations of how to write Chinese characters using the proper stroke order. Itis our hope that teachers will encourage students to make effective use of these Web sitesto gain a clearer, more solid understanding of Chinese character stroke order.

Although we have actually increased the number of vocabulary words andexample sentences in the revised edition, due to changes in formatting and font size, thisedition has fewer pages than the last, making the book easier to flip through and carry.

Ms. Anmin Liu undertook the revision of this book, coordinating thesupplementation of vocabulary words and example sentences. Ms. Cara Healey proofreadthe entire English portion of the manuscript and also provided many valuable suggestions.To them we extend our sincere thanks. Of course, any errors in the final manuscript arethe authors' own.

Chih-p'ing ChouPerry LinkXuedong WangMay 10, 2011