One of the lesser-known (to foreigners) Chinese holidays is the Double Ninth or Chung Yeung Festival (重陽節). The Double Ninth Festival takes place every year on the 9th day of the 9th lunar month. In 2020 that will be October 25th. Although it is a popular holiday celebrated in China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan,…
As Chinese is a national language in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Macau, you’ll have a much easier time in your travels around Asia if you first learn Chinese. The official Chinese dialect of China and the other listed countries is Mandarin, also called “Putonghua”. More than 70% of the Chinese population speaks Mandarin,…
One of the best ways to improve your Chinese is through watching TV shows. If you have a Netflix subscription you’re in luck because there are a lot of Chinese TV Shows on Netflix. There are both Netflix originals and shows that Netflix has purchased the rights for. This list is up to date as…
The Double Seventh Festival, or Qixi Festival falls on the 7th day of the 7th lunar month. This year, that is August 25th, 2020. The Qixi Festival is widely known as Chinese Valentine’s Day. THE LEGEND The Qixi Festival originated with the legend of the cowherd (牛郎 Niúláng) and the weaver girl (织女 Zhínǚ). In…
Have you been wanting to learn a new language and you just can’t decide which would be the most useful language to learn? Or you know you want to learn Chinese but you need some motivation to start? Well here are ten great reasons to learn Chinese today! Chinese is the most widely spoken language…
Here is a collection of my favorite resources for learning Mandarin Chinese online. Just by using these resources I think you could go from total beginner to fluent. As you progress I suggest you create a study plan and change it up every few months based on your needs. Your listening, speaking, reading and writing…
Using 我wǒ要yào一yì杯bēi咖kā啡fēi (I would like a cup of coffee), to order a cup of coffee really isn’t sufficient these days. What about the size? Would you like it flavoured? How about the kind of coffee bean? None of this is covered by “我要一杯咖啡”. We don’t want you to go unprepared to answer the follow up…
When they’re born, children are tabula rasa. They’re like a perfect blank canvas that you get to paint. They are also fit for learning new things, faster and easier than adults. Just think of the way children learn their native language. They acquire it naturally, without learning a single grammar rule. They’re like little sponges…
A collection of some of our favorite Du Chinese reviews. Du Chinese is rated as the top app for Chinese reading practice on both the app store and Google play store. Some of the useful features of Du Chinese include: Recommended lessons based on your reading history Full access to stories, lessons and premium content Goal-tracking…
We compiled this collection of HSK 4 reading practice lessons to give you an easy way to access the HSK 4 lessons that we have shared so far on our blog, as well as a few from our lessons page. We’ll update this list periodically as we add more. If you’d like to access all…
