The Kung Fu series, a set of learning material on the Chinese language, is the product of collaborative efforts of experts from mainland China, Hong Kong and the U.S. It aims at providing texts and exercises that will have fresh and accurate language, communicate effectively with an international audience, have clear and orderly structural explanations, and contain a good number of contextual, task-based exercises for stimulating students to higher levels of fluency. "Kung Fu" (I) is the first volume in the series and is meant to satisfy the requirements of an elementary Chinese program. There are twenty-two lessons in total, each including: lesson text in Chinese characters; vocabulary, with contextual examples for selected entries; supplementary vocabulary; grammar notes: points of structure are explained fully, with adequate contextual examples as reinforcement; phrases and sentences, a series of phrases and complete declarative, imperative, interrogative, or exclamatory sentences for drill reinforcement of new material; lesson text in pinyin romanization; lesson text in English translation; task-based classroom activities; and reading comprehension for selected lessons. These twenty-two lessons are preceded by eight that systematically cover the sound structure of Putonghua and introduce expressions routinely used in class. A separate Student Exercise Manual is also available for use by students outside class. The manual is designed to be used in conjunction with the Kung Fu textbook. It contains two types of material for use by students outside class: (1) Chinese script introduction and practice and (2) exercises on material introduced in each lesson of the Kung Fu(I)text. The Kung Fu exercises are self-explanatory. Chinese writing material includes: the standard simplified version of characters introduced in each lesson; stroke-by-stroke break down of each newly introduced character; the radical, or indicator, of each character; the traditional form of the character in the far right column, should it differ from the simplified; and a gridded page for writing practice once correct stroke order has been learned.

How Chinese characters triumphed over the QWERTY keyboard and laid the foundation for China's information technology successes today. Chinese writing is character based, the one major world script that is neither alphabetic nor syllabic. Through the years, the Chinese written language encountered presumed alphabetic universalism in the form of Morse Code, Braille, stenography, Linotype, punch cards, word processing, and other systems developed with the Latin alphabet in mind. This book is about those encounters—in particular thousands of Chinese characters versus the typewriter and its QWERTY keyboard. Thomas Mullaney describes a fascinating series of experiments, prototypes, failures, and successes in the century-long quest for a workable Chinese typewriter. The earliest Chinese typewriters, Mullaney tells us, were figments of popular imagination, sensational accounts of twelve-foot keyboards with 5,000 keys. One of the first Chinese typewriters actually constructed was invented by a Christian missionary, who organized characters by common usage (but promoted the less-common characters for “Jesus" to the common usage level). Later came typewriters manufactured for use in Chinese offices, and typewriting schools that turned out trained “typewriter girls” and “typewriter boys.” Still later was the “Double Pigeon” typewriter produced by the Shanghai Calculator and Typewriter Factory, the typewriter of choice under Mao. Clerks and secretaries in this era experimented with alternative ways of organizing characters on their tray beds, inventing an input method that was the first instance of “predictive text.” Today, after more than a century of resistance against the alphabetic, not only have Chinese characters prevailed, they form the linguistic substrate of the vibrant world of Chinese information technology. The Chinese Typewriter, not just an “object history” but grappling with broad questions of technological change and global communication, shows how this happened. A Study of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute Columbia University

Along with The Art of War by Sun-Tzu, The Six Secret Teachings on the Way of Strategy is one of the most insightful and comprehensive of the so-called Seven Military Classics of ancient China. T'ai Kung, to whom this classic is attributed, has been honored throughout Chinese history as the first of the great military leaders and as the father of strategic studies. In this book, T'ai Kung offers a broad range of teachings on strategy that are applicable to leadership in any arena of human activity, including: the importance of benevolence in building strong and effective organizations, strategies for overcoming an opponent of superior strength, the role of moral leadership as the basis of prosperity, the hidden dynamics of power and the strategies of command, and specific tactics for overcoming adverse situations.

"DeFrancis's book is first rate. It entertains. It teaches. It demystifies. It counteracts popular ignorance as well as sophisticated (cocktail party) ignorance. Who could ask for anything more? There is no other book like it. ... It is one of a kind, a first, and I would not only buy it but I would recommend it to friends and colleagues, many of whom are visiting China now and are adding 'two-week-expert' ignorance to the two kinds that existed before. This is a book for everyone." --Joshua A. Fishman, research professor of social sciences, Yeshiva University, New York "Professor De Francis has produced a work of great effectiveness that should appeal to a wide-ranging audience. It is at once instructive and entertaining. While being delighted by the flair of his novel approach, the reader will also be led to ponder on some of the most fundamental problems concerning the relations between written languages and spoken languages. Specifically, he will be served a variety of information on the languages of East Asia, not as dry pedantic facts, but as appealing tidbits that whet the intellectual appetite. The expert will find much to reflect on in this book, for Professor DeFrancis takes nothing for granted." --William S.Y. Wang, professor of linguistics, University of California at Berkeley