Dictionaries

For individual zi, I find this little Chinese-Chinese dictionary to be worth more than its size might suggest. Although it is geared toward native readers of Chinese in the traditional script, I find that the choice of headwords is broad enough to cover the mainstream vocabulary of ancient literary and classical works. (This is probably partly because there are so many literary references in modern writings in Taiwan and Hong Kong and because the traditional literature still plays an important role in the educational system.) When traveling, if I have room for only a single dictionary to help in reading Chinese, the Guoyuribao Zidian is usually my choice. Although it is geared toward the native Chinese speaking student or general reader, it covers about 10,000 individual characters, more than other dictionaries of this small physical size, except for some abbreviated editions of the classic Kangxi Zidian, and this extensive repertoire commends it to non-Chinese students of Chinese. This dictionary, along with its twin, the Guoyuribao Cidian which focuses on explaining multisyllabic words, is a powerful, convenient, and inexpensive package that no student of literary Chinese should be without.