Over the past decade, with more and more students thinking of a China-related career, interest in Chinese culture and China's languages has grown rapidly. In the meantime, at Stanford University where I teach Chinese linguistics, the Chinese as a foreign language program has become the second-largest one in terms of the number of students enrolled in different levels of instruction. In writing this book, I hope to systematically introduce English-speaking students to some basic linguistic knowledge, in addition to different socio-cultural aspects of the Chinese languages to meet their diverse interests. I first recognized the need for such an elementary book when I was preparing to teach a new course on Chinese language, culture and society in 1998 and could not find any published work in English specifically dealing with the topic. It so happened that in the summer of 2001 Ms. Kate Brett of Cambridge University Press visited me and, upon hearing of my search for such a book, encouraged me to write one myself. The following year, I submitted a book proposal and was very glad that Cambridge University Press quickly decided to move forward with it.

In the course of writing the manuscript, I have received generous support from my colleagues and friends. In particular I want to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the Dean's office of the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University and Stanford Humanities Center for providing me with a Stanford Humanities Fellowship that has given me a year's time to write up this manuscript.