This is a wonderful little book. I have used it as a language teaching text for many years. The selections are very short, originally written in Chinese for Chinese readers and thus neither watered-down nor designed to illustrate this or that dreary rule of linguistics. One can be really creative in teaching with this text.

I have also found it useful in a workshop I teach on the art of translation. In addition to translating chapters of novels and short stories, we use these mini-selections as quick exercises in which everyone in the class translates exactly the same thing: then the students criticize each other's work. Since these little gems are fully and accurately annotated, we can thus concentrate our attention on the art of translation and not worry unduly about the meaning of the text.

'Gateway to the Chinese Classics' is an excellent introduction for those who wish to get a feel for classical Chinese. It is, however, very much an elementary text, giving the complete beginner a mere taste of the beauty of the language. The text itself is poorly organised, with one chapter leading on to the next in a progressive manner; it is not at all clear that a given chapter deals with a particular topic, which makes it fairly useless as a reference grammar, a problem compounded by the lack of an index. Despite this failing, the reader who works through the book chapter by chapter will have a good foundation in classical Chinese by the end of the book.

Each chapter generally comprises vocabulary and notes thereupon, grammatical structures, examples thereof, and exercises. One notable omission is answers for the exercises, and not all the passages have a translation provided. By the end of the book, the reader would have a passing familiarity with most of the essential basics of classical Chinese.

Physically, the book is well printed and bound, the Chinese characters being clear and sufficiently large. Most of the textual errors marring the previous edition have been corrected to make for a much better text. The pages are fairly sparely printed, allowing ample space for personal notes.

All in all, this book is an excellent, step-by-step introduction to classical Chinese. However, it is suitable only for those who wish to work through the book from start to finish. It does presuppose some knowledge of Modern Chinese written in the traditional script. There are worse ways to get a feeling for the beauty, cadence and brevity of the Classical Chinese language, which was the official written language of China until less than a century ago.

Just beginning to learn Classical Chinese - with the help of Rick Harbaugh's fantastic etymological dictionary - I quickly ran into the quandary of the 'empty' function words of the Chinese language. Wow was this book helpful! While my university background does not match what Jeannette recommends for this book - as so far I have been studying China's Classical Philosophy through translation - a little interest and application has quickly revealed this book to be very valuable. Profoundly valuable. As in I now (again with the help of Mr. Harbaugh's dictionary) read the dao-de jing in its original characters valuable. It is clear and straightforward, rather than being overly extensive; and it does an excellent job of simplifying the more confusing aspects of this ancient language. This book is a wonderfully helpful step along the journey of the Classics of Ancient China.

'Gateway to the Chinese Classics' is an excellent introduction for those who wish to get a feel for classical Chinese. It is, however, very much an elementary text, giving the complete beginner a mere taste of the beauty of the language.

The text itself is poorly organised, with one chapter leading on to the next in a progressive manner; it is not at all clear that a given chapter deals with a particular topic, which makes it fairly useless as a reference grammar, a problem compounded by the lack of an index. Despite this failing, the reader who works through the book chapter by chapter will have a good foundation in classical Chinese by the end of the book.

Each chapter generally comprises vocabulary and notes thereupon, grammatical structures, examples thereof, and exercises. One notable omission is answers for the exercises, and not all the passages have a translation provided.

Physically, the book is well printed and bound, the Chinese characters being clear and sufficiently large. There are, however, a fair number of textual errors, albeit minor ones, which detract slightly from the quality of the production.

All in all, this book is an excellent, step-by-step introduction to classical Chinese. However, it is suitable only for those who wish to work through the book from start to finish. It does presuppose some knowledge of Modern Chinese written in the traditional script.

This book assumes you have a reasonable grasp of basic Chinese and characters. Traditional characters and Pin Yin are used throughout the book. Classical Chinese is complicated and Jeannette Faurot rightly points out that you have to "get a feel" for it. The book uses a vast range of examples and many poems to help you develop your own "feel" for how this language works. Language points are well explained and the cultural notes are informative. The last few chapters start leading you into longer texts. I used it for self-study but I'm sure it would work well in the classroom. Now I truly understand the wisdom of "Dao ke dao fei chang dao".

On sleepless nights I would grab this book and read a few stories and it never failed to whisk me away to faraway lands and times of long ago. My mom always told me Chinese fairy tales when I was growing up and I would always be enchanted by the lady who lived in the moon, felt the sorrow of the weaver maiden and pranced around jumping on furniture pretending to be the Monkey King, in my case Queen. This book brought back childhood fantasies that are lost when one grows up and helped create new fantasies with tales from countries I had never known as a child. Korea, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, all have rich cultural heritages and the many legends and fairy tales retold in this book bridged a connection to these distant lands.

I recommend this book for younger audiences so they have more variety in their readings and knowledge of other cultures.

This is also recommended for adults because you're never too old to run around like Mulan and defending your furniture as if it were people, fighting for the good of China or your apartment.