The use/purpose of 的 in this sentence?

Hi doodlemonster, it's the "to separate adjectives of more than one character" use (it's not so easy to understand is it, written like that! but that's what it says in your grammar book apparently, and it is true) listed in your post here.
The 的 separates the multi-character adjective 繁华 from 凤凰城 the noun it is modifying. You don't need this separator 的 when the adjective is a single character--like 好孩子, 老朋友, 新学生 (in my understanding, in these cases the attribute sort of merges with the noun to produce a descriptive noun).
Sorry, I must be confusing you.
Anyway, in other words 凤凰城 is a 繁华(的) city.

This use of 的 is very common.
Just a few other examples are 有趣的问题 (interesting question) / 好看的小说 (good, engaging novel) / 热闹的地方 (lively, bustling place).

Has this helped?

My Bio says that I am a 学习中文的日本人. The 学习中文 is an attribute of this Japanese person (= me). What sort of Japanese am I--? The sort that studies Mandarin.

Yaay! Thank you! That did help some what considering my knowledge of Chinese is the size of a peanut :P And thanks for digging out my old post! haha I totally forgot about that! I guess I'm just going to have to get expossed to Chinese before I start to widen my knowledge >.<

I think the thing I have trouble with/am scared of is stuff like sentence structure. Since I've grown up with the same 'modern language rules' such as in French and Spanish, I've never had to learn any since I was like 5 and even then, they were just drummed into me! :P So I'd always be familiar with the transliteration patterns like 'the coat of blue' (the blue coat) or 'the house of Jack' (jack's house) and things like that.

However, in Chinese, all these grammar rules just seem to totally baffle me and I have no idea where to start :| the vocab and writing I can do fine; it's just a matter of pratice and exposure to new words all the time and practicing stroke order. It's just the grammar that scares me a bit (well a lot actually! :P) Where do I start?! o.O

Allow me to a little further confuse doodlemonster, hehe. Here is an example of 的 placed after a one-character adjective, "很好的孩子" (an adverb + an adjective + 的 + a noun), although it's virtually "a two character adjective".

Like I said before it's great that you're pushing yourself and taking on such a challenge. I guess you're using your dictionary pretty heavily to read the book (and so these little particles with many uses like 的 are the most trouble)? But if the grammar still baffles and scares you, maybe you should take a little time to become familiar starting with the most basic sentence patterns. Starting with the simplest of sentences like 我是英国人。 and building little by little on them so that you gradually become able to make and understand more complex sentences. I guess it's something like a beginner's reader you want for that (my first teacher was very good at teaching beginners. She just gave us a little dialogue to repeat and learn each week at class. First it was four lines I think. By the end of the term it was quite long. the learning process was painless and it all made sense.).

This approach may seem just too easy and terribly boring at first, but I think you'll be able to get rid of any fear that way very effectively. 加油加油！

I've been looking online and off for something like a beginners reader for years. I have lots of chinese learning books but only one book that is a real book. This book is great as it has a chinese half and an english half but sadly its from hong kong and is in traditional chars and a while back I decided trying to learn both sets at the same time was meaning I did't do either well!

I'd like to sit down with a really simple story book aimed at kids so that I felt I was achieving something but so that I am not soooo challenged that I despair! I even wondered about chinese comic books as these often add a picture to describe whats happening as well, but alas obtaining things like this outside china does not seem to be all that easy. And I cannot find a web site, probably because my chinese is not good enough to find them on a chinese search engine and looking for chinese children stories in english inevitably yields translated equivalents.

If anyone can suggest a way to find some chinese reading matter that has a purpose but is not overwhelmingly challenging I'd love to hear it.

Thanks for replying! ^^ Yeah, I have been using my dictionary a LOT, or rather, a character recognition one online as well since I can't even pronounce half the hanzi yet o.O But even now, I'm starting to recognise more characters in the book than I did in the summer (yes, it's taken me FOREVER to read it but I can't really be that dedicated to Chinese the moment because of lots of school exams/coursework T.T so I'll have to wait till the summer). But guess what?! I'm going to start learning Japanese at school in september! Eeeeeek! How cool's that?! Because I've struggled for sooooo long trying to come up with learning techniques by myself, plus I've always wanted to 'add' another Asian language to my collection! :P Hopefully I can apply the techniques and things I learn in my Japanese lessons to my Chinese at home! I can't wait for the new challenge of Japanese! XD

And thank you so much for the advice, I think it's just a bit of guidance I've wanted all along! (I'm more of a follower than a leader, I like people to tell me what to do :P) I've got a ridiculous amount of grammar books which I haven't even opened since the summer because they looked too scary! :P Perhaps it's time to dust them off and tackle the challenge straight on ^^

Thanks for replying! ^^ Yeah, I have been using my dictionary a LOT, or rather, a character recognition one online as well since I can't even pronounce half the hanzi yet o.O But even now, I'm starting to recognise more characters in the book than I did in the summer (yes, it's taken me FOREVER to read it but I can't really be that dedicated to Chinese the moment because of lots of school exams/coursework T.T so I'll have to wait till the summer). But guess what?! I'm going to start learning Japanese at school in september! Eeeeeek! How cool's that?! Because I've struggled for sooooo long trying to come up with learning techniques by myself, plus I've always wanted to 'add' another Asian language to my collection! :P Hopefully I can apply the techniques and things I learn in my Japanese lessons to my Chinese at home! I can't wait for the new challenge of Japanese! XD

And thank you so much for the advice, I think it's just a bit of guidance I've wanted all along! (I'm more of a follower than a leader, I like people to tell me what to do :P) I've got a ridiculous amount of grammar books which I haven't even opened since the summer because they looked too scary! :P Perhaps it's time to dust them off and tackle the challenge straight on ^^

haha, yeah, I definitely love a linguistic challenge! I think it's becoming a slight obsession of mine... :P I even started learning Cantonese at one point but it was just too hard because there's so little physical learning material, especially reliable stuff. I think Cantonese is a less formal language and doesn't follow many rules which is why you can always trust stuff >.< So I just kinda gave up on that after I came back from Hong Kong, gave in and decided to learn Mandarin! ^^ I found ChinesePod using a search engine and that's when the rest of my life began! haha

So yeah, I hope to have a good collection of languages! I'd really love to be a translator when I leave school, especially in Asia but then my other passion is illustration and drawing so I can't decided yet between the two T.T the ideal job would incorporate both art and Asian languages but we'll just have to see.

So in September, I'll be continuing Spanish as an A Level, starting Japanese lessons and also continuing ChinesePod! ^^ At some point in my life, I'd love to be fluent in all three! I definitely love a linguistic challenge! :D I'm the most fluent in Spanish but my Chinese is sloooowly creeping up! :P I really hope to study Mandarin at university, especially since there's a fantastic course at Nottingham where you can spend a year in Ningbo in China which would be amazing! But I suppose I'll have to see how my A Levels go... :S