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Written Chinese  Chinese is a unique language.  Unlike most other languages around the world, written Chinese uses a “pictorial” representation rather than a phonetic one.  Chinese characters are not “sounded out” but are rather used to represent ideas.  (e.g. 人 is the symbol for “person”.)  Thousands of such symbols, or “radicals”, are combined into characters to form more complex ideas, independently from the sounds that verbal speakers might use to describe them. Speakers of different Chinese dialects often cannot understand each other verbally, but can…

Green tea ( 绿茶 lǜchá), red tea ( 红茶 hóngchá) or pu-erh ( 普洱茶 pǔ’ěr chá ). Which one to choose? Chinese proverb says: ‘drinking a daily cup of tea will surely starve the apothecary’. And that is not surprising. Drinking tea is important part of Chinese culture since the reign of the Tang Dynasty (618-907). At this time, Lù Yǔ 陸羽 has written ‘ The Classic of Tea’ ( chájīng 茶经), the world’s first book devoted exclusively to tea.…

New Year’s Eve traditions and superstitions in Taiwan In daily life Taiwanese use Gregorian calendar. However, for important holidays they use the traditional Lunar Calendar. New Year’s Eve celebration in Taiwan begins this year on February 15th. It will last 15 days ( from the 1st to the 15th day of the first lunar month ). How Taiwanese prepare for New Year’s celebration and what are superstitions connected to the Spring Festival? From February 8th Taiwanese clean their houses. These…

The Chinese language (汉语) is used by the most number of people in the world – as many as 1.3 billion. Almost 50 million foreigners are learning it. Learning one of the oldest languages ​​in the world today is a very popular form of investing in the future. The Chinese language consists of seven main dialects: Mandarin (官 话), Cantonese (广州 话), Hakka (客家 话), Wu (吴语), Min (闽语), Xiang (湘 语) and Gan (赣 语). The official language of mainland China…