In this article, we are going to explore some special Chinese idioms or figures of speech that involve numbers. Numbers can be used to express a lot of things, not just to count, and when they are used as idioms,…
Early in their studies, almost all Chinese learners are taught“有时候”（yǒu shíhou）, which means “Sometimes”. However, when you go deeper into learning Chinese, you’ll find that it cannot be used in all cases. Besides “有时候”, there are other words for “Sometimes”…
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…
Unlike English and some other languages, Chinese doesn’t have a specialized pattern of verb changes to indicate tenses. So how do the Chinese tell the different tenses apart? Well, we usually use time words to express different tenses, and these…
‘好(hǎo)’ in its original definition means ‘good’, and when it’s used as a response or reply, it automatically transforms to mean ‘fine’, ‘sure’ or ‘ok’. Yet, with various words and interjections following ‘好hǎo’, it changes to show different emotions or…
An interjection is an exclamation, especially as a part of speech. An example of an interjection in English would be “Ah!” or “Oh!” Many of you may already know it’s a common phenomenon for Chinese sentences to end with interjections,…
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…