I’m at the point where I’ve finished a few novels in Chinese (reading at a very slow pace), but I think it’s very hard to track down good stuff to tackle.
I find most of the threads about this to be, well... unhelpful. Most recommend works like 《红楼梦》、anything by Lu Xun and Lao She, Journey to the West, that kind of stuff. Look, I know those are the classics, and yes, everyone should check them out someday, but they’re terrible recs for learning the language. I mean, have you ever actually sat down with 阿Q？I easily read at the HSK6 level and I can barely get through it, Have you tried to pick up 《茶馆》? It’s advanced for a native speaker and packed with a ton of slang from the Qing Dynasty.
It’s not just the vocab. Historical works are often full of etiquette or cultural concepts that are common knowledge in China but aren’t often in the dictionary. We know in western historical fiction that the “Redcoats” are the British, but in Chinese Civil War fiction, who were the “Yellow Coats”? Etc.
I recently picked up 《活着》by Yu Hua (the guy that wrote Chronicle of a Blood Merchant) and I’m so, so stoked - it’s perfect. The language is very modern, the vocab level isn’t nuts, but the writing is wonderful and engaging. I’ll be reading all of his stuff for sure (and suggest you do, too! I think you could tackle it at HSK5? Maybe even 4, if you were determined enough). But that got me thinking, is there anything else like this? (I’ve read Liu Cixin and Mo Yan, but that’s it)
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