Fans of Chinese and Mandarin
Chinese characters are basically a language of pictures, which contain within them subtle relationships, images, and memories that cannot be captured by alphabetic language. Imagine if all the movies in the world disappeared, and in their place were written summaries and descriptions of those movies. Imagine only being able to “experience” those movies through these written summaries, … Read more
For most of ancient China, chopsticks were called “箸zhù”(Evidence can be found in a large number of ancient documents), and Chinese neighbors learned this name. Later, due to some customs changes, Chinese people changed their chopsticks to “筷kuài”, while their Asian neighbors still used the old name箸. In some parts of China today, some dialects … Read more
Well, Isaiah Lee is translated in Chinese as 以赛亚·李. In my humble opinion, if your friend wants to have a name looks and sounds more like a Chinese name, then Li Zeyan, or 李泽彦 in Chinese, could also be an option. 李 is a major surname in Mainland China. The founder of Tang Dynasty, a … Read more
Well, if what you wanted to ask in this question is whether after learning traditional Chinese characters, you could automatically understand Classical Chinese, then the answer is no. Whether you learn simplified Chinese characters or traditional Chinese characters, if you learn want to understand Classical Chinese, you need to first learn and understand vernacular Chinese, … Read more
Well, it depends on which chemical elements you refer to. I mean, if you refer to chemical elements that Chinese people already knew before the introduction of the periodic table, for instance, mercury and silver, they were known as 汞 and 银 in Chinese for thousands of years. Of course, apart from these familiar chemical … Read more
Well, it depends on which surname Wang you refer to. I mean, there are four Chinese surnames that could be written in Pinyin as Wang, i.e., 王, 汪, 望 and 旺. Of course, precisely speaking, 王 is written in Pinyin as wáng. 汪 is written in Pinyin as wāng. 望 and 旺 are written in … Read more
I live in China, whenever I write numbers (01234566789) on a piece of paper by hand, Chinese people are generally confused and can’t understand what I wrote. I doubt you actually live in China since a single trip to the market would show you a bunch of vendors with calculators if they don’t have computers … Read more
This would be a really fun question for me to answer. Little bit on my background. I’m Singaporean Chinese, L1 is Chinese and L2 is English, but due to my education and work, I’m L2 dominant. With respect to the topic of Chinese handwriting, I would like to quote a video I watched recently, that … Read more
This is very difficult to answer in a general, catch-all way as it depends on many variables Where you live: I lived in Shanghai when I first arrived in China. I didn’t have zero Chinese, but pretty close. I could recognise the obvious everyday characters, such as those for entrance and exit (入口，出口）and some place … Read more
This Chinese character 虚 has multiple meanings. It could mean empty and unoccupied, for instance, 座无虚席, which literally means a banquet with no empty seats and is usually used to mean full house. It could also mean humble and modest, for instance, 虚怀若谷, which means modest and open-minded. It could also mean weak in health, … Read more