Dreaming in Chinese

"Dreaming in Chinese" Deborah Fallows 2010
I have been trying to learn Chinese characters and written Chinese (see the Tuttle book, an earlier post, for great teaching of characters).
Fallows' book is about the spoken language. It is particularly about how to understand China through the way that its language works. Fallows taught me about the emergence of tones in spoken Chinese (reminiscent of the aliens in Mieville's "Embassytown"). There are only 400 syllables in Chinese. The four tones take this spoken number up to 1600 sounds. Even so, there are huge numbers of homonyms. One poem, by Chao Yuan Ren, is 92 syllables long. It is about a poet, Shi, who wants to buy some lions because he is hungry. He buys the lions and takes them home only to find that they are stone lions. In written Chinese the story is clear. In spoken Mandarin, the poem is 92 repetitions of the syllable 'shi' in its four different tones and so is very amusing.
The book is great and my understanding of China, spoken Chinese, Hanzi, and even LaoBaiXing. If I knew how to put the tones into this post I would.
A quick read and a wonderful book. Fallows is a clear observer and writer and, professionally, a linguist.