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The focus of this lesson was to teach about Chinese cuisine
Basics of Chinese Cuisine

• Many people are surprised on their arrival in China to find that what they thought was Chinese food is nowhere to be found.

• Another challenge is that the names of Chinese dishes, even in Chinese, can be very cryptic, making ordering a challenge, even if you find a menu with English translations. Chinese dish names are generally completely irrelevant to the ingredients.

• Rice is generally a staple of the south, with noodles featuring in as well.

• Northern China features dishes made with wheat flour, such as noodles, dumplings, steamed buns, and thin pancakes.

• Where meat is often the focal point of many western meals, it is the starch-rice or noodle-that is the starting point and palette for Chinese meals.

Regional Cuisines

• There are 8 main regional cuisines in China; the flavors vary from hot and spicy, to sweet and oily, even pungent and sour.

• The main cooking methods employed are stir-frying, deep-frying, steaming and stewing.

• Chinese kitchens rarely have an oven, though there are various specialties that are roasted.

Famous Seasonal Dishes

• The Hairy Crab of Shanghai comes into season in October/November. A local delicacy that is exported around the country and beyond. One of the most savored parts of the hairy crab are the sperm in the males, and the eggs in the females.

• Hot pot is a warming food that is popular in the winter. A large pot of broth is set to boil, and the diners cook their own meats, vegetables and seafood by boiling them in the soup.

• In mid-to-late September, the mid-autumn festival is celebrated. Mooncakes are ubiquitous at this time of year, and are gifted and re-gifted amongst friends, relatives and from employers to employees.

• • Mooncakes are round, like the moon, and have a pastry-like crust with a flavored filling; from lotus paste to sweet red bean; even salty egg yolks.

Table Etiquette

• Chinese food is generally prepared in bite-sized pieces that can easily be picked up with chopsticks. A knife at the table is considered barbaric.

• It is a demonstration of utmost hospitality and respect for the host to dish food onto his guest’s plate. Often, this will be done repeatedly, despite futile pleads on the eater’s part to being full.

• It is fine to leave some food in one’s plate, as if one cleans the plate, it is a signal to the host to put more food onto it!

• In China, dishes are served communally, and there are no serving spoons. The diners all use their own chopsticks to dip into the dishes.

• Never stab your chopsticks into your rice bowl and leave them there. This is the worst of all Chinese dining faux pas, as it is related to a funeral tradition.

Food as Medicine

• From bird’s nest soup to deer antlers, Chinese food therapy dates back as early as 2000 BC.

Well thats all we have for today! What is the most unique Chinese food you have ever eaten? Please leave us a comment and let us know!

The focus of this lesson is to test your knowledge about China. This lesson will build your basic knowledge of China by quizzing you on 5 areas of Knowledge: Geography, Pop Culture, Travel, Economics and Myth Busting!! Are you ready?

1)What percentage of China’s 1.3 billion people live in urban areas?
A) 10% 
B) 40%
C) 50%
D) 90%

2)China has the following number of provinces:
A)22
B)23
C)34

3)Following are three famous Chinese people. One is a famous singer, one a politician, and one a sports star. Match the person with their profession:
王菲 刘翔 胡锦涛
(Liú Xiáng)(Wáng Fēi) (athlete) 
(Hú Jǐntāo) (politician) (singer)

4) Rank in correct order the most popular travel destination in China:
Shanghai Beijing Xi’an 

5) What year did the economic reforms that transformed China’s economy into a market-oriented economy take place in?

6) Fortune cookies originated in China. True or False? Read the rest of this entry »

The following are 6 essential phrases guaranteed to be the best thing you ever learned in Chinese!

1. 谢谢 (xièxie) 　“Thanks.” The Chinese aren’t big on ‘please’, but they love thank you so much that they’ll often hit you with a barrage of it, ‘xiexiexiexiexiexiexiexie’.
2. 听不懂 (tīngbùdǒng) “I don’t understand what you are saying.” This phrase is going to be your best friend, go-to and solace. 
3. 你好 (nǐhǎo) “hello” If you don’t know it yet, we don’t know where you’ve been.
4. 不知道 (bù zhīdào) “I don’t know.” You may hear this phrase more than use it, however learn from the Chinese how to bu zhidao every situation you wish to evade, play dumb about, or avoid.
5. 不好意思 (bùhǎoyìsi) “Sorry.”  Buhaoyisi literally means ‘bad feeling’, and can be used to apologize to all the dainty toes your oversized foreign feet will step on in the crowded subway, to repent over some cultural faux pas you likely don’t know you’ve committed, or to just curry favor, in general.
6. 让一下 (ràng yīxià) “Let me through.”  Buhaoyisi’s slightly stronger cousin. Use this when you’re trapped in a subway car and can’t get out, or stymied in your efforts to crowd-worm through a city of 18 million people.

There you go.  Just don’t blame us if #4 doesn’t work

The following are 5 essential phrases guaranteed to be the best thing you ever learned in Chinese!

谢谢 (xièxie) 　“Thanks.” The Chinese aren’t big on ‘please’, but they love thank you so much that they’ll often hit you with a barrage of it, ‘xiexiexiexiexiexiexiexie’.

听 不懂 (tīngbùdǒng) “I don’t understand what you are saying.” This phrase is going to be your best friend, go-to and solace.

你好 (nǐhǎo) “hello” If you don’t know it yet, we don’t know where you’ve been.

不 知道 (bù zhīdào) “I don’t know.” You may hear this phrase more than use it, however learn from the Chinese how to bu zhidao every situation you wish to evade, play dumb about, or avoid.

不好意思 (bùhǎoyìsi) “Sorry.”  Buhaoyisi literally means ‘bad feeling’, and can be used to apologize to all the dainty toes your oversized foreign feet will step on in the crowded subway, to repent over some cultural faux pas you likely don’t know you’ve committed, or to just curry favor, in general.

让 一下 (ràng yīxià) “Let me through.”  Buhaoyisi’s slightly stronger cousin. Use this when you’re trapped in a subway car and can’t get out, or stymied in your efforts to crowd-worm through a city of 18 million people.

We know we said top 5 phrases but all of these words are so important and usefull, we thought we would include all 6!

There are only six vowels used in pinyin, but they are combined to produce a lot of different sounds. we have a pinyin chart with clickable mp3 records of each of the sounds, to aid you in perfecting the pronunciation in the full lesson on ChineseClass101.com.

One of the more difficult Chinese vowel is the ‘u’ vowel sound. This ‘u’ sound is quite a nasal sound. It is said to be similar to the French ‘u’ and is made by pronouncing an ‘i’ when rounding the mouth.

Chinese has four different tones they are, five including the neutral tone:

• The first tone is high and steady: ‘mā’

• The second tone is a rising tone: ‘má’ and has intonation similar that that used in English to indicate a question, i.e. ‘huh?’

• The third tone dips down slightly in the middle: ‘mǎ’. You can feel a slight vibration at the base of your throat when you are doing it correctly.

• The fourth tone is falling, and falling fast. Sounds slightly angrier than the rest. ‘mà’.

• Then we have the Switzerland of tones, being the neutral tone. Which is a relief, because it’s just… well. Neutral. No tone. ‘ma’.

There are some special circumstances that occur with certain combinations of tones that are together in a compound word or sentence. When two or more third tone characters occur in a row, the last of these remains a third tone, while the one(s) before it change to the second tone. If there are more than two third tones in a row, the final third tone in each series
remains a third tone, while the rest become 2nd tone.

The focus of this lesson is to learn about Chinese pronunciation.

Each Chinese character can be said to be a syllable. These syllables can be a stand-alone word, or they can be grouped together to make compound words. Each syllable, or character, in Chinese is made up of an initial and a final sound. These intials and finals can be combined to make up around 400 unique word sounds in Chinese.

Chinese uses a phonetic system called ‘pinyin’ to aid learners of Chinese in pronunciation. This pinyin uses Romanized letters to represent the sounds of Chinese. There are 21 initials in Chinese. This is the sound the word starts with. There are about 38 combinations of final sounds.

Some of the letters used to represent the sounds of Chinese are similar in pronunciation to their English counterparts. However there are some that are different. The ones that give some people trouble sometimes are as follows:

Z - the difference with the english ‘z’ is that this sound is made with your tongue touching the back of your upper teeth. This results in a more ‘dz’ sound.

C - sometimes confused with the ‘z’ sound, the ‘c’ is aspirated whereas the ‘z’ is not. Aspirated means that you let air out when producing this sound.

Zh -to make this sound the tip of the tongue is raised against the back of the gum ridge. It has a similar sound to the English ‘j’, but the retroflexive nature makes it much thicker.

CH - is similar to the English ‘Ch’ however the tip of the tongue is raised against the back of the gum ridge, as it is in the ‘zh’.

SH - is similar to the English ’sh’ however the tip of the tongue is raised against the back of the gum ridge, as it is in the ‘zh’ and ‘ch’.

X - it also seems similar to the English ’sh’ but it is in fact produced quite differently. You raise your tongue up and let the air squeeze out.

Q - it is in the range of the English ‘ch’ but different in that it is also produced in the same way as the x. you raise your tongue and let the air squeeze out.

R - this one is tough. Nothing like the English ‘r’, don’t be fooled by the use of the letter ‘r’. again, curled tongue, a zee-ish phenomenon.

Today’s All About Chinese lesson focuses on the origins of written Chinese–the only writing system that has been in use continuously for over 3,000 years.

All characters are made up of smaller ‘picture’ elements within the character. Some of these smaller pictures within the character give a hint as to meaning and pronunciation (though not always). The first Chinese characters were simple objects like “human”, “hand”, “foot”, “mountain”, “sun”, “moon” and “tree”. Then logical combinations of the simple characters followed. These simple characters also sometimes serve as the root of a more complex character, and are called “radicals”.

Most linguists believe that writing was invented in China during the latter half of the 2nd millennium BC. The earliest recognizable examples of written Chinese date from 1500-950 BC (Shang dynasty).

The traditional form of Chinese characters was widely used up until the mid-20^th century. Most of the simplified Chinese characters in use today were the result of simplifications made by the government of China in the 1950s and 60s. The simplified characters have a lot less strokes and certain parts of some characters were completely eliminated. The simplified characters are also used in Singapore, but in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and Malaysia the traditional characters are still used.

The workable literacy in the Chinese language only requires a knowledge of between three and four thousand characters.

Elements that make up a Chinese word
Chinese verbs and adjectives generally consist of one character (syllable) but nouns often consist of two, three or more characters (syllables).

When written on the page, each character is given exactly the same amount of space, no matter how complex it is or how many strokes it contains. There are no spaces between characters and the characters which make up compound words are not grouped together.
Pronunciation
Pinyin is a phonetic system used to teach standard pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese, to spell Chinese names in foreign publications and to enter Chinese characters on computers.

Initials and finals are the elements that make up a word in pinyin. Nearly each Chinese syllable are spelled with one initial sound followed by one final sound. There are only about 400 different combinations of initials and finals in Chinese, of course each Chinese character can also have four possible tones, so that adds to the amount of individual sounds.

Chinese Verbs

• Chinese verbs are not inflected… meaning that they don’t change form. Only one form of each verb exists; there is no conjugation.  It doesn’t matter who is talking, when they are talking about, or who they are talking to, the verb is the same.

Word Order

• Since there is no conjugation of verbs in Chinese, Word order is often your only clue to figuring out who is doing what. The good news is, in normal Chinese declarative sentences, word order is the same as that we use in normal English declarative sentences, being:subject - verb - object

Negation of Verbs

• Negation occurs before the verb and any prepositional phrase, just add a negation word, 不 ‘bu4′, in front of the verb.

Expressing Tense

• Chinese verbs don’t change ‘tense’.  Rather, we use time words to indicate whether something will happen tomorrow, is happening now, or happened yesterday.  The Chinese language relies heavily on the use of adverbs to communicate what English and many other languages do with different verb tenses.

Measure Words / Classifiers

• In Chinese measure or “counting” words must be used when objects are enumerated. Generally the format is number + measure word + object.  When the number is ‘1′, however, it’s OK to omit the number in that case.

Pronouns

• Chinese has 1st, 2nd and 3rd person pronouns.  They have singular (I, you, he, she and it) and plural forms (we, you, and they).  The same pronouns are used for subject, object, possession, etc.To make a pronoun plural, you simply add the suffix 们 (men) to the pronoun.

In today’s All About Chinese we take years of Chinese learning experience and China life experience and boil it down to bring you the top 5 reasons to learn Chinese.

There are numerous different reasons to learn Chinese, below some of the more important reasons are listed.

• Chinese is the language of nearly one-quarter of the world’s population. Speakers of Chinese are spread throughout the globe.

• Unlike most languages, Chinese has a unique writing system, which provides visual comprehensibility and is considered by some to be an art form.

• Chinese grammar is easy!

• When you learn Chinese you also learn how the Chinese think. The structure of Chinese is not only logical, but also pragmatic, and very related to the particular way of Chinese thinking. Learning Chinese opens up the culture of one of the world’s oldest civilizations. You are learning much more than just a language.

• China currently boasts the fastest growing economy in the world and is widely regarded as the potentially biggest global market in the twenty-first century. Proficient speakers of Mandarin Chinese will have more job opportunities in various fields such as business, government, international relations, information technology, tourism, education, translation and much, much more.

Below are some cultural insights into different aspects of Chinese linguistic Culture.

• Chinese is its own language family– About one-fifth of the world’s population, or over one billion people, speak some form of Chinese as their native language.

• China is the only country in the world whose literature has been written in one language for more than 3,000 consecutive years.

• Chinese is its own language family, and there are estimated to be 8,000 dialects of Chinese.

• Though there are tens of thousands of characters, Mandarin Chinese has only some than 400 syllables, or individual word sounds. As a result, a single sound can represent more than 100 different written characters. Tones and the use of compound syllables multiply the number of available word sounds.

How to Really Learn Chinese in Just Minutes a Day and Stick with it

The Myth

What if I told you mastering Italian wasn’t that hard. That actually learning the language itself is not nearly as difficult as you may have heard. And that the problem to progressing is an age old one…failure to execute.

The Real Issue

Said another way, “People don’t progress ’cause they don’t do! If you don’t do the work, you won’t reach your goals.”

Read the rest of this entry »