hey guys,

want to start Chinese lessons, mostly self-study, any book you guys recommend, i travel to China once every two months for a few days, no time to go to local schools, any other experience you can share will be appreciated.

thanks. ani

I would recommend starting with Audio CD's available through people like Amazon or ebay at a discount. Books are a little problematic because you can't get a good feel for the tones and basic sentence structure so for book study to be successful you really need a teacher or tutor as well. For your situation I would recommend to start with the Pimsleur 4 compact disc series which retails for $19.95 but can be bought on ebay for $10-$15. You can listen to these and practice basic sentences at home or in your car. If this method of learning works well for you, then you can go on to the Pimsleur 1,11,111 series and then to more advanced courses after that from other publishers. Pimsleur will give you the basics.

If you are in business, I would recommend a dvd series like the business course offered by Sinolingua after you grasp the basics with Pimsleur.

All depends on how much you want to learn how fast and what is your final goal. I learned all of my Spoken, Reading, and Written Mandarin through independent CD/DVD courses. It can be done and eventually you will find what takes the most time is building basic foundations such as a fair amount of characters and vocabulary as Mandarin has far more words to express an idea than you will find in English.

Originally I only thought I wanted to learn to speak the language to get by, but in time realized that by learning to read and write allowed me an insight to the amazing Chinese soul.

I would also recommend that you invest in Pleco fairly early on.
http://www.pleco.com/index.html
This electronic dictionary will allow you to set up flashcards in many different ways that best suit your needs to increase your vocabulary. You will also be able to translate SMS messages you get on your phone in China as well as other documents.

This should at least get you started.

thanks Renovator, that's very helpful and encouraging.
It'll be difficult for me to spend lots of time on it with all the work and family stuff, but i can try to use the traffic time with CD in car, and the flight time when i travel around, so hopefully average 4-5 hours / week.
how long it takes you to get by the basics?
thanks. ani

With 4-5 hours per week, you should be able to give basic directions to cab driver, hotel, restaurant etc., within a year. You will actually be able to start giving instructions in certain situations within a few weeks from when you start your studies, but it will take a year to feel somewhat comfortable in multiple situations. If you use Pimsleur, what you know will probably sound pretty good when you spout it out in Chinese, so well that the person on the other end may assume you know some Chinese and will talk to you at 100mph and you won't understand a word they say. Don't worry, in time you will little by little start understanding much of what is said to you.

I am in a similar situation as you in that I go to China every 4 weeks for 2 weeks and have been doing that for years. Everytime you go to China, just make sure you use what you learned while in the US and you will find that each trip you can communicate better and better.

I speak several languages including English that I learned in school so I tend to learn languages rather easily. Chinese has been by far the hardest language to master but I have really enjoyed the challenge. For me, learning Chinese is a serious hobby where I can learn something new every day.

The China Panorama series of books are really useful.

Practical, day to day situations.
Available in the foreign book store here.