Fans of Chinese and Mandarin
chinesespeaking 
[In Chinese, tomatoes are called “foreign eggplants/aubergines”] In Taiwan 番茄 fānqié/fanchye “tomato” is often mistakenly written 蕃茄 (with a “grassy plant” radical above the first character). It is not generally known that 番 in this compound means “foreign”: 番茄 literally means “foreign eggplant”. The eggplant (American English)/aubergine (British English) is dark purple with a bit of green … Read more
One very important concept captured by a Chinese character is “ren” or 忍。 This is a very interesting character: it carries the concept of a knife or 刀 held over the heart or 心。Naturally, having a knife held over your heart would be a very uncomfortable situation to say the least. But the character “ren” … Read more
This is a letter written by Mao Zedong 毛澤東 on 1 May 1955 to his colleague Jiang Zhuru 蔣竹如, addressing the topic of pīnyīn 拼音 as a form of written Chinese: The text reads: 竹如兄：二月惠書收讀，甚謝！兄作語文學研究，提出不同意見，我雖未能同意，但辯論總是會有益的。來書已付文字改革委員會研究去了。拼音文字是較便利的一種文字形式。漢字太繁難，目前只作簡化改革，將來總有一天要作根本改革的。此覆，順問教安。毛澤東 一九五五年五月一日。” Translation Dear Zhuru: I have received and read your esteemed letter of last February. Many thanks! Your study of spoken and … Read more
Yes, and for a number of Chinese English learners (especially senior school students) writing English words or sentences or anything like these are truly a great torture. For example, I type these words for about a minute,but if I write down my answer in Chinese, it needs a minute as well. Actually typing English word … Read more
There’s nothing wrong with the Chinese translation for “cow”, and Chinese people don’t have an issue with cows. The thing is the English pronunciation of “cow” sounds like a Chinese cuss word: ”kao”, which is the Chinese equivalent of the F word.
The Chinese character 稀 is rare. It is often in the news these days as 稀土 or rare earth (elements). 稀 is xi¹ (like c). Before the character 稀/希 was coined 罕 is often used for rare. It was composed of a net above a forked stick. I think they caught something rarely seen which … Read more
奐 is called “huan” aka Juan which is Spanish for John which is the Hebrew name Yohanan which means “God is gracious 上帝是仁慈的”。奐 (as 换) means exchange or to take the place of. The picture that is 奐 is a man on top of a cave 穴。 The stone cave is where 丙 the tablets … Read more
First let me show you my daily handwriting of the four characters provided as an example by Augustus Chen, see below (plus the official spelling): You can see the significant reduction in strokes: the original four charaters have 30 strokes in total, but I can write them down for 1 to 3 strokes per character … Read more
I believe even basic Chinese learners would know this word. It means “car” and is pronounced “chē”. Except it isn’t. You see, when we recite the word 車 in classical poems and literature, or for the rook in Chinese chess, we pronounce it “jū”. So which one’s right? The etymology book “釋名”, written in the … Read more
Meaning: “666” is a Chinese word,homonym for “牛牛牛”(niú niú niú) or “溜溜溜”(liù liù liù), used to describe someone or something is very powerful,cool,impressive.It is a slang of Chinese, in China, when you describe something as brilliant, excellent or amazing, for instance, when your friend have finished a hard task or have a perfect performance, you … Read more