Book excerpt: Mastering Chinese characters in reading and writing is the key to mastering vocabulary and all the practical language skills involved in Chinese language study. This book introduces the reader to the 2436 Chinese characters for the six levels of the official Chinese Language Proficiency Exam (HSK) by offering information on their pronunciation in Hanyu Pinyin, their basic English meaning definitions, their stroke order and other relevant information. Exercise sheets are included for each character entry with gray shaded lines that allow to draw along the character lines with a thin pencil in the correct stroke order. For HSK exam preparation, the book may be used to concentrate on Chinese characters not yet known while disregarding those already known. Other students who are not preparing for the exam may benefit from this dictionary and book of exercises as well.