Occasional Danwei contributor Peter Micic is the author of a new Chinese language textbook The Language Adventures of René in China. This is how Micic describes the book:

I've poured myself into it. I wrote, tweaked and adjusted it 'til I got it just right. In the process, I've written three volumes spanning a period of almost a decade. They're the kinds of texts I wish I had by my side as a companion to my grammar books when I first started to formally study the language at university in Australia. Each volume not only includes expressions and greetings, but a bounty of sociolinguistic information on the Chinese language rarely covered in textbooks. Volume I is for beginners. Each entry contains a common greeting or expression "acted out", so to speak, by a fictional character called René, a foreigner language student studying in Beijing whose course of study includes a part-time internship in a joint-venture market research company.

You can buy the book online, and also at Xinhua and Foreign Language bookstores in Wangfujing, Beijing and at the Foreign Language Bookstore on Fuzhou Lu in Shanghai.