A set of bilingual books compiled to raise local students’ awareness of international manners was launched over the weekend. The books were sent to more than 10 public schools in Shenzhen as gifts.

    The interactive books, compiled by a group of educators with experience studying overseas, were designed to pass on internationally recognized etiquette and cross-cultural knowledge to local students in English and Chinese.

    Even though there are already many books on the market that deal with manners in various social environments, there were no books specifically aimed at teaching young students about international manners.

    The books were compiled for students in Grades 1 to 6 and contain many different scenarios. There are six themes covered in the books — school, family, public place, restaurant, social interaction and traveling manners.

    All of the content is in both Chinese and English, so the students will be able to learn basic English while reading through the books.

    The deputy director of the city’s CPC publicity department, Han Wangxi, praised the books as good bridges connecting Shenzhen students and their counterparts around the world because he believed good manners could help the students make international friends.

    The books were sent as gifts to more than 10 local schools, including Nanshan Foreign Language School, Sinolink Primary School, Liyuan Primary School and Shenzhen Tsinghua Experimental School. The bilingual books will be promoted at these schools and might be modified to cater to a larger range of students according to reactions to the first batch of books.

    An expatriate teacher from Yucai No. 4 Primary School, known as Ghnea, said she liked the books very much and hoped to use the books in her classes. She said that students could play out the scenarios from the books in order to learn internationally recognized manners as well as English. (Zhang Qian)