this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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Honestly, you've got some recommendations? I'm actually more into non-fiction, but I really gotta start practicing my Chinese more. I wish more books adhered to the traditional character set and the top to bottom format though.
Haha I can't read a drop of Chinese, but the one that everyone tends to recommend as a gateway is The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin. Haven't read it yet but I did watch Wandering Earth on netflix, which is based on a short story by the same author.
Can confirm The Three Body Problem is an absolutely incredible read, very immersive.
There are a couple xianxia novels. Reverend Insanity (incomplete banned by the ccp but has some of the best word building and intelligent writting), Lord of Mysteries (more western fantasy lovecraftian mystery) and Forty Millennium of Cultivation (has 40k elements in it). Non fiction isn't really popular probably because anything non fiction in China that has anything to do with history is at risk due to censors and people in the west aren't really interested in reading ccp bootlicking.
Reminds me of "I'm gonna kill him! (in Minecraft)".
I was trying to learn some Chinese the other day to read some of the raw wordings in Ascending, Do Not Disturb. The novel itself is not amazing, although I did like it a lot, but the translators left some terminology untranslated and I had some fun researching how to read that.
I can't recommend Chinese sci-fi or nonfiction, haven't read any, I only read fantasy novels. My favorites are Coiling Dragon and Douluo Dalu. If you can read Chinese then why not try those lmao. I wish I could read Chinese. I wouldn't spend so much time finding translations.
I will say that most Westerners will find Chinese much easier to learn than Japanese. You only need to learn about 100 characters to understand 70% and then 1000 to understand like 95% of stuff.
I mean you probably wrote like 50 words in your reply, how hard could 100 be right?