Archive for the year 2011
Q & A: What do you want to learn about? Posted by Stephen on Mar 11, 2011
We here at Transparent Language Chinese value your input, so I thought I’d create this reoccurring Q & A post as a forum to ask and answer your Chinese related questions. Here’s how it will work: Post comments on this blog post for topics/parts of speech/etc… that you are interested in. Remember to leave the…
History of the PRC – Part Fifteen Posted by sasha on Mar 4, 2011
After the Nanjing Massacre, the city of Wuhan became the political, economic, and military center of China. With the fall of Shanghai and Nanjing, this city on the Yangtze River (长江 – Cháng jiāng) was basically the wartime capital of China, and Chinese focused their efforts on defending it. Japanese forces believed that if they…
History of the PRC – Part Fourteen Posted by sasha on Mar 2, 2011
With the New Year festivities behind us, it’s time to dive back into our history lesson on the tumultuous period between China’s last Emperor and the founding of the modern day People’s Republic of China. When we last left off in Part Thirteen, Chiang Kai-shek and his army had just suffered a crushing defeat at…
Harbin Part Two Posted by sasha on Feb 27, 2011
For day two in Harbin, we visited the Tiger Park and the International Snow Sculpture Art Fair. 老虎公园 – lǎo hǔ gōng yuán Tiger Park 我们迷路了 – Wǒ men mí lù le We got lost 虎园欢迎您 – Hǔ yuán huān yíng nín Tiger Park Welcomes You 菜单 – cài dān menu 一些老虎喜欢玩儿，一些喜欢休息 – Yī xiē…
Harbin Part One Posted by sasha on Feb 25, 2011
Last month, I took a weekend trip up to one of the coldest places in China. The capital of Northeast China’s Heilongjiang (黑龙江) province, Harbin (哈尔滨) literally translates as “a place for drying fish nets.” The 10th largest city in China looks like a mix of China and Russia (俄罗斯), thanks to its complicated history…
Computer games (电脑游戏) Posted by Stephen on Feb 23, 2011
Walk into an internet cafe or 网吧 (wǎng ba) anywhere in China and what do you find? Throngs of Chinese people (mostly male) fervently and ferociously clicking away on their mice (plural?) as they heavy-handidly mash upon their keyboards–yelling and screaming a cacophony of insults and swears that echo and reverberate throughout a dimly lit, cigarette smoke-filled room. Sure, you…
Qin Shi Huang (秦始皇), The First Emperor Posted by Stephen on Feb 22, 2011
As China continues its rise as a world power, we are reminded of the history of China’s rise and unification some two-thousand plus years ago. After all, China didn’t get to be the “middle kingdom” just by luck. Quite the opposite. China emerged as a powerful, unified nation due to a series of intra-state conflicts…