Chinese Language Blog

The Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节 – zhōng qiū jié) is fast approaching. This traditional Chinese holiday falls on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar (阴历 – yīn lì), which just so happens to be Friday the 13th this year! It dates back over 3,000 years to the time of the Shang Dynasty (商朝…

Chinese Teachers’ Day will be celebrated this month on September 10th. An old Chinese saying says: 人有三尊：君、父、师 (rén yǒu sān zūn: jūn, fù, shī). It means people have three to respect: the emperor, father, and teacher. According to the saying, a person should greatly honor the emperor who governed the country, the father who raised…

Summer holiday is almost finished! (暑假快要结束了- shǔ jià kuài yào jié shù le). Can you believe it? I know I can’t. It seems like just yesterday I was writing my post on talking about summer in Chinese with vocabulary words like water park (水上乐园 – shuǐ shàng lè yuán) and beach (海滩 – hǎi tān)…

China tries to eradicate the Beijing Bikini custom. With the arrival of summer (夏季xià jì), as temperatures rise along with the humidity, people in China find ways to deal with the heat. Ways that not all authorities in China approve. Jinan city, for example, the capital of Shandong province, believe the scorching summer days (炎炎夏日yán…

Summer (夏季 – xià jì) is in full swing in China. All across the country, people are doing their best to stay cool. For some middle-aged men, that means exposing their stomach in what’s known as the “Beijing Bikini” (北京比基尼 – běi jīng bǐ jī ní). Many families flock to water parks (水上乐园 – shuǐ…

For the Qixi festival, the Chinese Valentine’s Day that is celebrated this year on August 7th, I delved into some Chinese marriage vocabulary. Marriage in China has undergone changes during the last century. In this post we’ll take a closer look at different Chinese marriage practices. 爱是婚姻的基石。 Ài shì hūn yīn de jī shí. Love…

One of the first words I (and many other foreigners, for that matter) learned in China was “Cheers!” (干杯 – gān bēi). It’s no secret that drinking is a big part of the culture here. Whether you’re a 中国人 or a 老外, glasses are raised and clinked all the time in the Middle Kingdom. Things…