All Things Considered: Advanced Reader of Modern Chinese (review)

All Things Considered: Advanced Reader of Modern Chinese is the latest advanced reading textbook by Chih-p'ing Chou, a professor of Chinese at Princeton. For this book, Chou has teamed up with Yan Xia and Meow Hui Goh, both instructors of Chinese and also at Princeton. Editor of more than ten intermediate and advanced reading textbooks in as many years, Chou offers All Things Considered in another attempt to fill a resource gap in Chinese-language materials between the intermediate and advanced levels (roughly between the second and fourth years, respectively).

Many of Chou's previous contributions took the form of one volume for the text and a second for vocabulary, sentence patterns, and (sometimes) exercises. All Things Considered, however, is single volume in a new, all-in-one format that weighs in at over five hundred pages. It is divided into two sections: the first (about one-third of the book) consists of twelve dialogues, and the second, as described on the back cover, is "a selection of recent newspaper articles about contemporary Chinese society."

Regarding the topics chosen for inclusion, Chou, Xia, and Goh have selected a nice variety that should please and satisfy most third-year college students. The dialogues, especially, as has been said of the majority of Chou's previous textbooks, are lively and engaging. Other available textbooks at a similar level are often criticized for being dull, but Chou has applied his mastery of the Chinese language to providing truly interesting reading.

While it is explained that this text was developed for use in Beijing, now that the book is being marketed outside mainland China the first two chapters in Section 1, "Just Arriving in China" and "Renting a Bicycle," appear to be mismatched with the topics covered in the rest of the book. For both their subject matter and their levels of difficulty, they would probably be more suitable for the end of a second-year intermediate text.

The topics in All Things Considered are timely but not overly controversial. This last point is especially noteworthy if one remembers a certain American school that had recently adopted Chou's Newspaper Reading: The U.S.A. in the People's Daily (1993) for use in its overseas language program. It was told by the mainland Chinese government to change this textbook of choice because it put China and the Chinese people in an unfavorable light.

However, despite the broad range of its subject matter, there are other topics that might have better served the third-year student. The most obvious omissions, in this reviewer's opinion, are chapters dealing with such topics as human rights, unemployment, and pollution. While human rights may be judged a bit too controversial for the third year, particularly for a text to be used in China, the Chinese people themselves are becoming more willing to discuss unemployment and pollution with outsiders, as this reviewer witnessed recently during his residence there. This could especially be the case now in light of the selection of Beijing to host the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Perhaps what makes the omitted subjects so obvious is that a number of others are covered twice. Admittedly, a solidly designed third-year textbook will incorporate repetition and reinforcement. However, having two chapters each on the care of the elderly and May-December weddings seems a bit odd, considering the opportunity either to add more variety or to examine in greater depth those topics that a mainly American undergraduate and graduate audience are most likely to read about.

There is an admitted convenience to having the materials presented in one bound volume. One drawback to this arrangement, however, is that as the material increasingly focuses on "current events," it tends to become dated after as little as two years, compelling language programs to plan their third-year curriculum virtually on a year-to-year basis. The most...