Li Bai & Du Fu: An Advanced Reader (Simplified) (Cheng & Tsui Chinese Literature) (Chinese and English Edition)

This is a well-made text that will be helpful for students interested in poetry or translation. These are mostly vocabulary lists and basic guides to a quantity of poems. The poems are well chosen and the glossaries are up to the task. I would like to have more comment or analysis, especially with reference to the work done by translators and Sinologists over the past century and a more congenial introduction to the historical context (political and literary). But it does not really need that kind of support to work. An enterprising person could do a lot of this work using internet and other resources, but this book saves an incredible amount of effort by focusing on relevant definitions of words and terms, selecting more important poems and establishing a good background for managing the poets who are arguably the two most important poets of the Chinese tradition.Recommended for anyone wanting to work on original poems. If you are familiar with Hawkes' Primer of Du Fu and with Burton Watson's translations of Li Bai, then you probably don't need this book, but even then it could be useful. I wish I had had it a couple of decades ago.

Very useful for teaching Chinese literature to high school students, unfortunately it's not simplified Chinese

This is a beautiful book. The poems are nicely printed and each given their own page. Some of the more unusual words are defined with an accompanying gloss. There is also a glossary at the back. Please note, however, that this book is obviously not written for the beginner. While there are many passages in English, most of the book is in Chinese. Pinyin is not generally provided but does accompany new vocabulary and glossary words. English and Chinese titles are given for all the poems.My favorite thing about this book is that high-quality readings of the poems can be obtained from [...] for an additional $10. These recordings have a pleasing voice accompanied by music. They follow the order in the book and can be easily identified through the corresponding English titles.