'The authors have done a magnificent job explaining this important dimension in the use of Chinese. Learners will appreciate the care they have taken to ensure that the material is maximally relevant and clear. The dictionary will be an invaluable aid to both comprehension and production.' David Crystal, Honorary Professor of Linguistics, The University of Wales, UK. 'Grounded in corpus research, this dictionary has a number of laudable features: with focused attention on learner usage, entries are clearly analyzed, exemplified and contextualized.' Zheng-sheng Zhang, San Diego State University, USA. 500 Common Chinese Idioms is the ideal tool for all intermediate to advanced learners of Chinese. Based on large corpuses of authentic language data, it presents the 500 most commonly used Chinese idioms or chengyu, along with a variety of synonyms, antonyms and the most common structures, enabling the reader to make educated guesses about the meanings of hundreds of unfamiliar idioms. This practical dictionary is suitable both for class use and independent study and will be of interest to students and teachers of Chinese alike. --Book Jacket.