Looking to understand China?

Harvard has made available a free course on Chinese history as a MOOC (Massively Open Online Course). It's called "ChinaX". This would be a nice complement to your Rocket Chinese studies. This epic course is breathtaking in it's scope, thoroughness, and quality. Content is metered out in mutimedia (usually videos) of 5-10 minutes each. Fun exercises like singing the major dynasties to the tune of Frère Jacques or discussing how an ancient statesmen defined the essence of Han Chinese are open to all. Good reviews on content by New York Times and others. Over 30,000 people have enrolled so far. See the link below for more details: https://www.edx.org/course/harvardx/harvardx-sw12x-china-920 Here's summary from course page: China's past, present, and future: through history and geography, economy and ecology, philosophies and politics, literature and art. About this Course Modern China presents a dual image: a society transforming itself through economic development and infrastructure investment that aspires to global leadership; and the world's largest and oldest bureaucratic state, with multiple traditions in its cultural, economic, and political life. The modern society and state that is emerging in China will bear the indelible imprint of China's historical experience, of its patterns of philosophy and religion, and of its social and political thought and practice. Understanding China in the 21st century is inseparable from understanding China’s history as a great world civilization. Before your course starts, try the new edX Demo where you can explore the fun, interactive learning environment and virtual labs. Learn more.

That looks like a good resource. Here is another from MIT, mainly an online Chinese language textbook. This includes links to its chapters, audio files, and more. http://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-21f-003-learning-chinese-a-foundation-course-in-mandarin-spring-2011/online-textbook/ Course Description This online textbook represents materials that were used in the first four semesters (two years) of the Mandarin program at MIT. They eventually formed the basis of a print textbook of the same name, published by Yale University Press; information and supplemental materials for the Yale edition are available at the companion website. The OCW course materials were extensively revised, and at times reordered, before publication, but the general principles of the original remain: to provide a comprehensive resource for the foundation levels of Chinese language that separates the learning of oral skills from literary (the former being transcribed in pinyin, and the latter in characters). This resource contains the complete online version of the text and accompanying audio recordings.

Both of the above links look like a excellent resources. I will look deeper into them for sure