Book excerpt: Learn the Mandarin Chinese characters and words in everyday use in China! This book helps you to quickly learn the intermediate-level Chinese characters you need to know if you want to live or work in China, or progress to the next level with your language skills. Alongside 1200 closely-related vocabulary and phrases, it presents the characters in a series of 20 easy lessons--giving clear pronunciations, English definitions and a writing guide showing you how the character is written. In this book, you'll find: 300 characters grouped into themes A warm-up narrative for each lesson explaining how the characters in the lesson relate to the theme All characters and vocabulary needed for the HSK Level 3 exam and the Advanced Placement (AP) Chinese Language and Culture Exam Exercises that help you practice recognizing the characters and using the vocabulary to create sentences Reviews that provide a variety of drills and exercises to increase your proficiency Downloadable online audio by native speakers to help with pronunciation Printable flash cards This book is intended for intermediate learners (HSK Level 3). For HSK 1 & 2, see Beginning Mandarin Chinese Characters--the first book in this series.