The Lady in the Painting is the only full-length story written in Chinese for low-intermediate level learners of Chinese as a foreign language. The story is told with vocabulary and structures familiar to students who have completed a basic course in Chinese. Using an inventory of only about 300 Chinese characters, it serves as an excellent transition between the short reading passages that students encounter in a basic level Chinese course and the longer and more demanding passages in subsequent levels.

The original edition of the story has been widely used for decades as a supplementary reader in Chinese language classes in the United States. This expanded version--which includes an interactive CD-ROM--makes the story more accessible to learners in a number of ways.

• The book is available in simplified characters as well as traditional characters. (The original was available only in traditional characters.)
• It includes extensive vocabulary lists, structure notes, and exercises for each chapter.
• The CD-ROM provides extensive listening practice by way of sentence-length and paragraph-length readings as well as listening comprehension activities.
• The CD-ROM also includes a toggle function that enables readers to switch between traditional and simplified characters at any point in the story.