Learn to read and write Chinese with Chineasy—a groundbreaking approach that transforms key Chinese characters into pictograms for easy recall and comprehension.

Chinese is one of the oldest written languages, and one of the most difficult to master, especially for Westerners. With Chineasy, learning and reading Chinese has never been simpler or more fun. Breaking down the Great Wall of Language, iShaoLan Hsueh draws on her entrepreneurial and cultural background to create a simple system for quickly understanding the basic building blocks of written Chinese. Working with renowned illustrator Noma Bar, she transforms Chinese characters into charming pictograms that are easy to remember.

In Chineasy, she teaches the key characters, called radicals, that are the language’s foundation, and then shows how they can be combined to form new words and even phrases. Once you’ve mastered these key characters, you can practice your skills with three stories—a fairy tale, an Asian legend, and a contemporary fable—told using the radicals.

With Chineasy, readers of all ages will be able to navigate a Chinese menu, read signs and billboards, and grasp the meaning of most articles in a Chinese newspaper.

After taking a sabbatical from being a venture capital investor in London, ShaoLan is now focused on a social project, Chineasy. ShaoLan’s ultimate aim is to bring down the great wall of Chinese language and allow Eastern and Western cultures to communicate freely.

Born in Taipei and now living in London, ShaoLan is an entrepreneur, geek, writer, traveller and dreamer. She has had several dramatic career changes in the past and, while studying for an MBA, wrote four best-selling books on software, awarded “book of the year” in Taiwan. In her second semester she co-founded her first venture, pAsia Inc. Under ShaoLan’s leadership, pAsia became a major player in the Internet sector in the Greater China area in the late 1990’s. After moving to London, she began investing in and advising young technology companies through Caravel Capital, which she founded in 2005 whilst studying at the University of Cambridge. She has also been a director of five UK-based technology companies.

ShaoLan is a member of several management and advisory boards for nonprofit organisations in the UK, including the Saïd Business School of Oxford University, The Victoria and Albert Museum, Asia House, and the New School Network, an organisation backed by the British Government promoting educational reform.

http://chineasy.org