Mandarin might be easier than you realize There are a number of features which make it easier than English. For starters the grammar is pretty simple, the words are seldom more than two syllables long, nouns don’t have any annoying rules for gender or plural, and verbs don’t have tense. But mastering pronunciation can be a challenge. So, th...

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Jing’an Park is just across the street from Jing’an temple. On a sunny day you can always find music and/or dancing. The place is mostly populate with retiree’s. I usually find opportunities to practice Mandarin there. And sometimes the music is impressive. These guys are playing a couple of musical saws (音乐锯 pronounced yīnyuè j...

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A traditional song of greeting and merriment is the Gong Xi song. Chinese Pinyin English每条大街小巷Měi tiáo dàjiē xiǎo xiàngEach small street and large street 每个人的嘴里Měigè rénde zuǐ lǐIn everyone’s mouth 见面第一句话Jiànmiàn dìyī jù huàThe first sentence on meeting 就是恭喜恭喜Jiùshì gōngxǐ gōngxǐIs Greetings greet...

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Slick New Features We have added 2 new features to make our dialog tables more effective. Listen to one sentence at a time. Remove columns to reduce visual clutter. All the audio is now in the first column. The player button in the header will play the full dialog. And by clicking on the Chinese names, you will hear one sentence at a time. Yo...

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Chinese people follow two calendars. They use the Solar (Gregorian) calendar for daily life, and the Lunar calendar for festivals and holidays. The sun and the moon are not in synch, which is why Spring festival never falls on the same date twice in a row. This year it is on Feb 5. Spring festival actually lasts for 15 days, from the new moon to the ful...

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