“Step into Practice: Chinese for Economics Series” serves as a bridge for international students to switch from basic Chinese learning to business and finance majors, and also a good medium for advanced students of Chinese and foreign practitioners to further improve their comprehensive Chinese application ability according to their actual work needs.

This series consists of 7 books: Chinese for Commerce: Comprehensive Course (1 & 2), Chinese for Finance: Comprehensive Course (1 & 2), Chinese for Commerce: Listening and Speaking, Chinese for Commerce: Writing and Chinese for Commerce: Culture, covering common topics in the fields of business and finance.

The textbook strives to make the top-level goal of “integrating knowledge, ability and quality” concrete and put into practice, and make the outline project, teaching content and style design reflect the training requirements of multiple knowledge abilities and quality indicators. In terms of knowledge, this book emphasizes business Chinese and economic and trade expertise, while in terms of ability, emphasis is placed on business Chinese listening, speaking, reading and writing, comprehensive ability to use Chinese to deal with business issues and cross-cultural communication ability. In addition, it also helps to cultivate teamwork spirit and international vision.

This book is the Chinese for Commerce: Chinese Business Culture in the series, and is a cultural thematic Chinese textbook for specific purposes (business). The textbook consists of 8 units in total. Taking the clue of “concrete cultural objects to abstract cultural spirits”, from the four major cultural levels of material culture, institutional culture, behavioral culture, and spiritual culture, some explicit material forms or internal ways of thinking with typical characteristics of Chinese business culture are respectively extracted as specific cultural knowledge points. The content covers signboards and huangzi (traditional commercial signs in China), Chinese currency, enterprise inheritance, business customs, folk economy, century-old brands, business spirit, relationship marketing, etc. The content of each unit has been carefully designed and combined in terms of topic design, text compilation, and the cultivation of ability points. It forms a linkage with the Chinese for Commerce: Comprehensive Course. With the overall idea of “understanding and analysis — induction and summary — free expression”, it employs real-life case studies and simulations of authentic business scenarios to facilitate students’ acquisition of business Chinese knowledge, foster their  business-oriented thinking patterns, and enhance their proficiency in business communication.

Zhai Yijiang（Editor-in-Chief ） is an associate professor and Master candidates’ supervisor of the School of Humanities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and was the Chinese director of the Confucius Institute at Heidelberg University in Germany. His main research focuses on teaching Chinese to speakers of other languages and comparative Chinese characterology. He has published textbooks such as the A 21st Century Course of Chinese as a Foreign Language.

Duan Mo (Deputy Editor-in-Chief) is a PhD in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, and teacher at the School of Humanities, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. She has been teaching business Chinese courses for a long time and has won the second prize of school-level teaching competition and the first prize of college-level teaching competition. She has presided over four school-level teaching and research projects and one school-level teaching material project, and has published many papers on business Chinese teaching and task-based teaching.

Pan Qianfei (Executive Editor of this Volume) is a doctor who graduated from the School of Chinese as a Foreign Language at East China Normal University. Currently, she is a teacher at the School of Humanities, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and has been engaged in teaching international students for a long time. She once went to the United States and Malaysia to teach Chinese. She mainly teaches cultural courses such as Chinese Folklore and Chinese Business Culture, as well as various language skill courses, and is the editor-in-chief of the A Dictionary of Practical Chinese Customs.

As the special skills teaching material of “Step into Practice: Chinese for Economics Series”, Chinese for Commerce: Listening and Speaking Course continues the teaching objective of “ability cultivation as the core”, and is used in conjunction with Chinese for Commerce: Comprehensive Course and Chinese for Commerce: Writing in terms of topic setting, content arrangement, and ability point design and training, so as to achieve the goal of “integrating knowledge, ability and quality”.

This textbook is not a common reader of cultural knowledge but a training manual for intercultural competence. The refinement of its objectives, the structure of the outline, the selection of the content, the explanation and practice of knowledge, as well as the training of comprehensive abilities, are all based on intercultural theories (cultural hierarchy theory and intercultural awareness hierarchy theory). The tasks in the textbook are designed based on the task-based teaching theory, reflecting cultural conflicts at different cultural levels, which helps to effectively cultivate learners’ professional ability to use Chinese for business communication. It can be used in conjunction with other volumes in the series or independently.

This book can be used as a general Chinese textbook for commerce majors studying in Chinese, and can be used in conjunction with other sub-volumes in the “Step into Practice: Chinese for Economics Series” (Chinese for Commerce: Comprehensive Course, Listening and Speaking Course, Writing Course).