Imagine Chinese Photo Dictionary

Imagine Chinese presents 150 simple Chinese characters illustrated with photographs taken over a decade of travel in China. The story follows Armelle Burke's creative journey to understand Chinese using a camera, resulting in a book where language learning and travel photography collide.

A series of photographic essays visualise the iconic imagery in Chinese characters to give insight into the Chinese language and culture. The book has four sections: Human, Nature, Animal and Material, presenting Chinese characters relevant to each theme. An introduction to Chinese character construction and the evolution of Chinese script enables the reader to comprehend the information in the book.

Imagine Chinese concludes with a giant gallery mural illustrating the meaning of 600 Chinese characters with photographs, exemplifying that learning the simple characters enables Chinese comprehension to expand rapidly. The book’s Photography shows in glorious colours a fascinating country and illuminates what is dazzling, different and useful to know about a language and culture oozing imagination.