《新编英语阅读手册》

A New English Reading Handbook

> By Li Xiaolai · 2009-01-02 · [Original (web archive)](https://web.archive.org/web/20111113110503/http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/4829.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

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I came to know of Ye Yongchang (叶永昌) from my father's desk. To me, my father's bookshelves were a treasure trove; but there were a few books that always stayed on his desk rather than on the shelves—the ones on the desk were his treasures. One of them was A Practical Handbook of Scientific and Technical English Reading (《实用科技英语阅读手册》). Only later did I learn that the cumulative print run of this book reached as many as 1.3 million copies—within China, there must be very few scholarly monographs by intellectuals that have reached this print run.

My father actually had two copies of A Practical Handbook of Scientific and Technical English Reading—there was also a perfectly clean copy on the bookshelf; while the copy on the desk had dense notes in the margins of almost every page. My father could write especially small and extremely [Translator's note: the original writes 及其, literally "and its"; 极其 ("extremely") is meant; translated by the intended sense] neat characters with a ballpoint pen. Later, when I went to university, my father said, let me give you a few books; and so he took the clean copy of A Practical Handbook of Scientific and Technical English Reading down from the shelf; I said, "Dad, I want the one on your desk." Later, in my third year of university, losing this book in the library was one of the most vexing things of my life; and I never mentioned it to my father again.

Many years later, I saw Mr. Ye Yongchang's improved edition of this book, A New English Reading Handbook (《新编英语阅读手册》), in a bookshop and bought it on the spot (bought several more copies to give to a few friends). Several years have passed, and this book has been almost thumbed to pieces, only without so many notes—because my handwriting is too untidy and for many years I've been used to taking notes on the computer. I often wonder whether the person who took that book from the library back then really understood the importance of those notes? If they did, then I have no regrets.

A New English Reading Handbook was published by Shanghai Scientific and Technological Literature Press in 2001, and the first edition cautiously printed only 5000 copies. I often mentioned this book in class, but students said "it can't be found anywhere." For a time you could still see this book's description on Dangdang, but it was always out of stock. At the beginning of this year, I wrote a post, "[How to Master English Grammar](http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/260.html)" (《如何搞定英文语法》), in which I mentioned this book again, and many readers wrote to ask where they could buy it—in fact, it couldn't be bought anywhere anymore.

Starting in the second half of last year, I asked a colleague to contact Shanghai Scientific and Technological Literature Press and inquire whether we could request a reprint. After a long time, the publisher finally replied that a printing could only start at over two thousand copies, and they had to be bought in full, with no possibility of returns. So I requested a printing of 2500 copies—so that all my students would have the chance to use this grammar book. [If readers are interested in buying it, you can order it at our company's Taobao shop](http://item.taobao.com/auction/item_detail-0db2-18eb0de2db97bf677392a16ff767d27f.jhtml); the price is very cheap, only 19.8 yuan (I once tried to bargain with the publisher, and the publisher's people told me this was the 2001 price, so in fact it was already as cheap as it could possibly be……).

Mr. Ye Yongchang is a super rigorous scholar. Few grammar books in China are like this one, "one book, two tables of contents, several appendices"—super convenient to search (some grammar books actually don't provide an index; I really don't know how the authors think about things). While the system is complete, the example sentences are not only plentiful but finely classified. **I personally think this book is absolutely a must-have grammar book for English learners—I always tell students that [I "recommend this book till I spit blood"](http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/266.html)**:

> ……I remember one day I read a sentence like this: "Woman as she is, she is very brave." Then I got very agitated, because I knew every word, yet I just couldn't understand it. I picked up this book, flipped through the index, found the corresponding page number, and saw Mr. Ye's explanation, "as introducing a fronted predicative can express concessive logic" (roughly so; I can no longer find that book now)—the meaning of this sentence should be "Although she is a woman, she is very brave." And so at once I felt this book was very good, and later used it often. Later still, I saw the new edition, A New English Reading Handbook, in a bookshop and bought it (and later gave a few copies to friends). Although the meanings of some of its example sentences give a feeling of being behind the times, it is simply a book that later ones will find hard to surpass. Recommended—recommended till I spit blood.

**Seriously welcome to repost this article**—*preferably paste it all over the place*……

Supplement, 2010/07/05:

The electronic version of the new edition, English Reading Reference Handbook (《英语阅读参考手册》), has been made public on babelcollege.com; please look it up:

<http://babelcollege.com/ask/list_tag.php?tid=18>

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