Remembering Simplified Hanzi 1: How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Chinese Characters

I used both Book 1 and Book 2 to learn 3000+ characters, in 1 year. I studied around 1 hour a day.I used computerized flashcard system (Skritter) to practice the writing (this is a spaced repetition system - SRS).A few months after finishing, I am able to read many Chinese sentences, signs, menus, etc and my speed of reading and writing continues to improve. Learning Chinese is not easy and has to be broken into pieces that can be tackled one at a time. Before, each new word was a nightmare to learn because the characters would be so hard to remember, having never seen them before and having no technique to learn them. If I saw characters on a sign or in a book or comic I had no chance to remember them unless I copied them immediately. Now when I learn a new word I almost always know the characters that combine to make it, and their meanings. Sometimes I stun my teacher by writing down, from memory, a word I've seen written somewhere, guessing at the meaning and asking her how to read it. So I feel now that the characters are largely under control and are my fiends, they are helping me while I focus my learning on the other pieces.I find a lot mixed opinions on this book. They seem to be split into three camps.1. Authors of other books on learning Chinese characters. They seem very biased.2. People who are looking for help to learn really early beginner textbook characters (100-200 characters that show up in their integrated textbooks). This is not the right book (or not the right time for this book) for them. Actually beginners textbooks focus a lot of teaching common everyday sentences which use quite complex characters.3. People who want to learn many (1000+) Chinese characters.Basically Heisig is designed to help people in #3 category. The basic premise of this book is based on the memory building effect of *meaning*. That is, studies show it is easier for people to remember that John is a baker, than that John's last name is Baker. With baker we imagine flour, soft bread, wonderful smells. With Baker there is nothing to go with. This is that technique that world memory champions use (Read: Moonwalking with Einstein).By taking the time to decompose the characters into components, you learn how to build up characters from pieces. He gives names to all the pieces, and the names have meanings, so you link a meaning witch each character and create a memorable story. It takes time to build this skill if you don't already have it but it is invaluable. I learned 3000 characters and have encountered many more and continue to use the technique.The book does not address pinyin. A lot of people ask for this because they think this book is somehow going to teach them everything about Chinese in one shot. It doesn't. You need to learn the sounds of characters in context because characters have multiple sounds depending on meaning/context. If you have to memorize the pinyin with each character you will have to also learn 2-3 pronunciations for different characters, which means understanding how it's used in context (words/sentences).If you want pinyin (it's useful if you are learning spoken Chinese simultaneously). A long time ago it was hard to find the pinyin for a character without a book, but now we have technology. You can download Heisig's list including pinyin, or use character input to write the character into any decent dictionary, or better still use an SRS system to drill yourself (can include pinyin, audio, etc) - all of this is included in Skritter's system for example. I just recommend you don't bother trying really hard to memorize them.My experience is that it's very easy to associate the characters to their sounds once they are in context of words and sentences, especially when the character is already quite familiar to you. The hard part is learning to recognize and write all those characters.

Heisig/Richardson's book, Remembering Simplified Hanzi Book 1, is of value, but I agree with others who say it has limited potential. I have studied Mandarin full-time in China for nearly 18 months. I decided to risk it and spend many hours studying the book while all my classmates chose a more traditional approach. I was definitely looking for a shortcut because remember characters *is* a long and hard process. I was hoping to have a distinct advantage over my classmates--an edge if you will. I believe in "working smart." I fully completed Book 1 and made flashcards for over 98% of the characters. Let me give a few suggestions and insights for those who are considering the book: (1) It will NOT make learning Mandarin simple. Nothing will. (2) Do not set your expectations too high. After completing the book, you will still not be able to comprehend any written material or be able to converse with anyone. Think of the book as a supplement, a tool, for *one* aspect of learning Mandarin--character memorization. (3) Sometimes the stories for certain characters are harder to remember than the characters themselves. For many of the characters, you can remember it quicker if you just write it a few times. (4) I found that my classmates write much faster than me. They have used the traditional method of writing each character multiple times. Every time I want to write a character, I have to remember a story. There is a lot more brain work required; but for those who put in the hard work of writing characters over and over, the recall is more instantaneous. (5) After going through the characters and book once, you will most likely *not* remember it forever. I think the subtitle, "How to Not Forget..." is a bit of a stretch. I still need refreshing of the stories and images after I have given each character a fair amount of time. (6) The character's meaning given in the book frequently does not match what the character means in words and context. For example, the meaning assigned for the character "zhuang1" is "attire," but in the two-character word "an1 zhuang1," the meaning of "zhuang1" is "install" and has nothing to do with "attire." Thus, one character can have multiple meanings and you simply cannot reduce a character to a single meaning as in the book. (7) The responses to critics in the book by Heisig/Richardson do not and should not nullify the criticisms. Some of the criticisms are quite legitimate and similar to what is in my review. There *are* limitations to this method. (8) I cannot emphasize enough the importance of the pronunciation (pinyin) of the word. This is an essential part of the character. In the Heisig/Richardson method, this comes later--you learn the character and its meaning first, and come back later and learn the pronunciation. Well, if you do not know the pronunciation for any given character, YOU DON'T KNOW THE CHARACTER. Don't think that you will *know* the characters after you finish the book. You'll only know them halfway. This goes back to not setting your expectations too high. (9) This book would be best used *before* you learn Mandarin in a classroom or Mandarin-speaking environment. I would suggest spending some time going through the book before studying in China or before starting a Mandarin program. You can self-study this book without a language partner and completely outside of a language environment. The book *will* help to make memorizing characters easier since it gives you another aspect by which to remember the character. I find it helpful to go back to my flashcards when I'm learning new characters. I think they're probably best learned in the context of words and sentences rather than by themselves. (10) I have found it helpful to use multiple methods to remember Chinese characters: writing them, having mnemonic/creative ways to memorize them (such as this book), learning what they mean in context, finding words that use them, learning their pronunciation and saying them out loud, etc. I suspect that some (certainly not all) who have success with the Heisig/Richardson method already have great memories. Mine is average or perhaps slightly above average. I think most of the people who read this book have similar memorization difficulties as myself. (11) I value the book and Heisig/Richardson method for assigning meaning to parts of characters which have no inherent meaning; "primitives" (a broader meaning than radicals) such as brushes, combs, towels, etc. If nothing else, it would be helpful to scan and memorize these primitives found throughout the book. This will make learning characters easier, but still not simple. Sorry for the long review, but I hope it will ultimately save you hours and shattered dreams. Now, back to studying Han Zi...

I bought this book maybe three or four years ago. The technique is interesting, and they have built a good structure to the book, but on pretty much every character I just wanted to reach through the page and punch the writer. It's got an incredibly cocksure, very American and (most strangely) an overtly Christian tone to it. Example for 江:"China's equivalent to the Mighty Mississip' is the Yangtze. In fact, the character in this frame... can be used as an abbreviation for the Yangtze, much the same as the "River" of "Old Man River" is for those who live on the banks os the Mississippi. The elements that make it up show water and an I-beam. Actually, the heavy metal I-beam is being launched as a raft by some mentally challenged Huck Finn hoping to cruise on the Yangtze."I mean please, just stop. It's like this throughout and it feels throughout like the authors are convinced by their own genius. I've used loads of other textbooks and I can now speak and write Chinese at a fairly advanced level, but I could not get on with this book at all.

This book introduces an really excellent method of learning Chinese characters. They are much easier to remember using Heisig's stories rather than the traditional method of just drumming them into your head with hours of practice, writing and studying them.I only have two problems with this book. One is that because it is paperback, quite small and thick, it is difficult to use. You must keep one hand on it at all times to keep it open on the page that you are using. A hardback or larger format thinner paperback would be better.The other is that there are a few hundred characters with no story. You must make your own story for them. It would be better if a story was provided for all characters saving me time making up one. Also while most of the stories are good and easy to remember there are a few that are very hard to relate to the character and I had to replace those stories with more relevant ones that are easier to remember. So the book needs some more editing and finishing but overall this book is a great help when starting to learn characters and has given me the tool that I need to learn at least 1500 characters. Maybe 3000 if I move onto Heisig's second book later.

I already have Tuttle's  Learning Chinese Characters: v. 1  which I thoroughly recommend, but thought I'd give this book a go as it seems to promise a different approach.I have to admit when I first got it there was something very obvious about it that made me think "what on earth??" But then after trying the first few chapters I realised that what I thought was a fundamental flaw is actually a clever approach.Here's what's missing: you are presented with several hundred of the most common Chinese characters. You are told their meaning. But not how to say them.There. Told you. Doesn't that sound bizarre? Well that's because it is and yet...I gave the book a go and let me tell you, the trick works. By the end of the first couple of chapters I knew many more characters than I did using other methods because I was focusing on recognising them, not pronouncing them. The idea is that once you have the characters stored in your brain you can start to focus on how to actually say them later, and it's an approach that really seems to work.I came back from Singapore at the weekend and while I was there I found I was able to recognise the characters I'd seen in this book, and figure out what they meant on signs, far more reliably than characters I'd encountered through, say, the Tuttle book where I was simultaneously learning the character, it's meaning and its pronunciation.This book encourages you to work quickly, and I'd say it's a good approach. Read the character, write it a couple of times, move on. That's all it needs.The book is organised intelligently. it's not by word frequency but by radical, so you're introduced to the character for "sun", and "mouth" and "eye", all of which are similar, and written similarly. You're then introduced to characters that use those ones - e.g. "goods" (which you'll see a lot on shop signs).That means you'll be learning the character for "reckless" before the character for "me", but that's not a problem as the point of the book is to help you quickly recognise characters, not to teach you to speak Chinese.It's a difficult concept to get across in a review and you really need to try it with an open mind.One other thing - I've found my writing of Chinese characters has improved immensely with this book - before I couldn't really write very well at all. With this book, I'm scribbling tiny characters all over the place. My Chinese friends were very impressed!So to sum up - clever approach, completely at odds with what you expect and probably think you want, but it really is worth a go. Highly recommended. Learning Chinese Characters: v. 1

This is an essential purchase if you are teaching yourself Chinese. It is nearly a year since I bought this book. Since then I have used the method it teaches as the basis for remembering characters, both to read and to write. It certainly has worked for me, and I would see no reason why that would not be true for most readers. As described elsewhere, it provides simple stories to help you remember each character. You could make these up for yourself, but the book has a logical approach you are unlikely to better, based on a sensible mix of traditional meanings and imaginative diversions.Of course the book by itself will not make you fluent. You will also need Flashcards, online websites, and hundreds of hours of application. Nevertheless it should give you a solid base to your studies. Volume 2 is also good, but you do not need to buy it at the same time.

I pretty much agree with Mr. James Gregory's review (23 April 2011). My extra thoughts based on my own efforts to learn Mandarin: Positives: 1/ The logical order given by this book allowed me to work efficiently through the characters, and I absorbed many valuable tips about how the appearance of the primitives (character building blocks) change depending on their position in the character, and I had many "ahaah!" moments when I encountered a character I thought I knew, only to discover I didn't. 2/ It was interesting and productive for me to try the story method for memory retention. Definitely a technique I will continue to use.Negative: memorising 1500 characters is a neat party trick, but it seems to me to be most useful if you already have good conversational Mandarin, thus enabling you to immediately use the characters in reading and writing. (Also 1500 chars might be useful if you are about to go to learn in China, or go on a full time university course, where you are flung into an immersive environment). Otherwise you have memorised 1500 characters with Keywords which may be only obscurely related to the meanings, and for which you don't know the associated words (i.e. real words made up of 2+ chars). Therefore you still can't read with understanding, or write sentences. I am learning Chinese part-time, and I got half way through the book and realised there was no suitable reading material for me with which to practice, and despite what the author says, I did not think the characters would stay in the memory forever if not used. And if I stopped half way through, I would have learned to write chars like “Superfluous”, but still not encountered “You” and “Me”. I continued to work through the book concentrating only on HSK3 level characters, and it was BURDENSOME to look up the HSK level. It would have been immensely helpful if the author would have annotated each frame with either the HSK level or the Character Rank/ Frequency Number.To sum up, the choice of 1500 chars seems arbitrary, and for the average student simply too many, because you can’t use all of them yet. However, I think this book has helped me, so I am giving the book a 4. (review updated after passing HSK3 exam) (A note about keywords: It must be difficult to choose keywords when each character can have multiple meanings, and in the end I found most of the keywords helpful)