A series of bilingual textbooks published this month by Sinolingua, affiliated to China International Publishing Group, will be showcased to overseas booksellers and readers at the Frankfurt Book Fair next week, said sources at the publishing house.

The fair, an annual grand gathering for booksellers, publishers and readers worldwide, is set to open on October 19 and will run until October 24.

The series contains eight books, including Spelling and Writing, Text, Idiom and Proverb, Xiehouyu and Literary Quotation (xiehouyu is a two-part allegorical saying), Chinese Poetry and HSK Model Test and Vocabulary (HSK stands for Chinese Proficiency Exam).

Both a CDROM and a CD will also be provided with every book, aiming to help teach Chinese spelling, words, vocabulary, grammar, culture and HSK.  

To help people self-study, the interface of every CDROM is in both English and Chinese. The texts are also chosen to focus on Chinese people's daily life, customs and personal communications as well as shopping and traveling in the country.

Besides the Chinese-English version, the textbook series also has Chinese-German, Chinese-Spanish, Chinese-Japanese and Chinese-French versions.

(China.org.cn by Wang Zhiyong, October 13, 2005)