Happy Chinese New Year! It’s now the year of the pig! As the zodiac cycle repeats every 12 years, if you were born within the Chinese Calendar year starting in 1923, 1935, 1947, 1959, 1971, 1983, 1995, 2007, and 2019,…
From textbooks, you can learn proper grammar, regular words and vocabulary, as well as sentence structure. You can also learn simple and ordinary conversations and dialogue. But what you can’t learn from textbooks are the slang, phrases, and buzzwords that…
In Part 1 of Chinese idioms and slangs, we talked about the 龙（dragon） and the 凤（phoenix, two animals that are traditional symbols of Chinese culture. But of course, they are not the only two animals that are a part of…
Animals have always been an indispensable part of the Chinese people’s daily lives. Naturally, many Chinese words reflect the close relationship between animals and the Chinese people. For example, in the Year of the Dragon, people will say “生龙活虎”(shēng lóng…
Socializing can be a challenge anywhere, but it can be especially stressful in a Chinese business setting! It’s evident that there’s an ongoing increase in the number of international businesses and entrepreneurs looking to work with Chinese corporations. What’s more,…
Flowers and trees are closely related to people’s lives. Because of this, for thousands of years, the Chinese people have coined many plant-related words and expressions. For example, Chinese people often associate “美女”(méi nǚ, a pretty girl) with a “flower”,…
As with all languages, Chinese has an informal set of slang words which can be quite useful to know and can help one communicate better. Chinese slang usually can’t be learned from formal courses, but you’ll hear it all around…
Here are two facts about Chinese idioms: there are lots and lots of them, and for the most part they are not particularly useful. I’ve been a student of Mandarin Chinese for 20 years. It’s one of the languages my…