The Shanghai Trilogy: Volumes 1, 2 & 3 — Complete Collection
One city. One love story. Three years of Chinese.
The Shanghai Trilogy is a complete graded reader series that follows Claire — a young French student — from the moment she steps off a plane at Pudong Airport, knowing barely enough Chinese to order tea, to the afternoon she holds a Chinese permanent residence permit in her hands and finally understands what home means.
Across three volumes and 43 chapters, you will read over 50,000 characters of Chinese with no English translation and no training wheels. You will learn the language the way it was always meant to be learned: by living inside it.
What's included:
Volume 1 — Shanghai, Here I Come! (HSK 3) Claire arrives. She eats her first xiaolongbao, orders bubble tea with the wrong sweetness level, meets a photographer at the Bund, and falls a little bit in love with a city and a person at the same time. The language is accessible, the dialogue is natural, and the cultural notes cover the essentials — WeChat, wet markets, the Mid-Autumn Festival, the rules of facing-saving.
Volume 2 — Shanghai, I'm Back! (HSK 4-5) Claire returns for a master's degree. The relationship gets serious. She meets the parents. She learns that the Chinese workplace has its own logic, that Chengdu is a philosophy, and that some arguments are actually conversations about the future in disguise. The language goes up to HSK 4-5.
Volume 3 — Shanghai, I Am Here (HSK 5–6) The final volume. A thesis defense, a job market, a proposal in an ordinary restaurant, a wedding in two countries, and a permanent residence permit that arrives on a Tuesday like any other. The language becomes literary. Chengyu appear throughout. Classical poetry is quoted not as decoration but as meaning. This is where everything you have been building comes together.
Why this series works:
Unlike traditional graded readers, The Shanghai Trilogy is designed to function as a mini-textbook at every level. Each chapter includes vocabulary lists built around words that genuinely need glossing — not basics — plus grammar notes, cultural sidebars, and generous margins for your own annotations. There is no English translation in any of the three volumes. There is no pinyin above the characters. There is only the story and the language, and the understanding you build between them.
The series grows with you. Begin Volume 1 at HSK 3. Finish Volume 3 at HSK 6. By the end, you will have read a novel's worth of Chinese, encountered over 800 vocabulary items, worked through 60+ grammar patterns, and learned 30+ chengyu in context — not on flashcards, but inside sentences that made you feel something.
That is the difference between learning a language and learning to live in one.
43 chapters total · 800+ vocabulary items · 60+ grammar patterns · 30+ chengyu · 50+ cultural notes and in-depth topics
Best for: Learners at HSK 3 and above ·Complete self-study arc from intermediate to advanced
Original value: 21€ → Save 8€!
