Another year is almost behind us, as we get ready to say to 再见 to 2016 and 你好 to 2017. While 2016 has gotten a bad rap, it was a pretty great year here on the Chinese blog. First of all, a big 谢谢 to all our readers for your continued support. Whether you’ve been following the blog for years or this is your first visit, we’re happy you’re here and we hope to bring you useful information on China and its fascinating language and culture. Let’s take a look back on 2016 and review all the great China-related things we learned. First up is a collection of our language posts from this year:

A Day in the Park

Hanging out in local parks is a huge part of Chinese culture. Check out some pictures from a few Chinese parks and learn 20 vocabulary words in this post.

Chinese Names for Countries

You’ll be able to understand a Chinese map or globe after learning all the country names.

• North America

• South America

• Europe

• Asia

• Africa

• Oceania

Once you’ve got some country names under your belt, you can move on and study this post talking about Countries, Nationalities, and Languages. Learn how to say where you’re from, what nationality you are, and what language you speak.

Directional Complements

Our series on directional complements (Part One and Part Two) will school you on how to talk about the direction of a verb. It’s super useful and something that will help seriously improve your fluency. Watch this video for more practice:

Seasons

This year we covered vocabulary for spring and fall to go along with past posts on summer and winter. Now you can talk about all four seasons in Chinese!

Yes/No Questions

Of course the answer to that question is a resounding YES! Learn how to ask and answer yes/no questions in Chinese by reading this useful post. Get some more practice in this video:

Music Genres

I don’t know about you, but I love music – listening to it, seeing it live, and talking about it all the time. You’ll be able to talk about it in Chinese thanks to this post introducing the vocabulary for music genres.

How to Use the 把 Structure

Grammar is frustrating and boring, but it sure is important. Learn how to use the often complicated 把 structure in this post. It’s very common in Chinese and a critical thing to learn once you’ve gotten the basics down.

Location Words

Learn all about location words in this series (Part One and Part Two) and you’ll be able to answer that age-old question “Where are my keys?” in Chinese. That is, assuming you actually know where they are.

Jobs and Workplaces

Learn some common job titles and workplaces in Chinese in this easy post. There’s also some further reading about teaching English in China, which is an awesome experience.

Conjunctions

Just as in English, conjunctions help us to hook up words and phrases and clauses in Chinese. This series (Part One and Part Two) teaches you the most common conjunctions as well as a few that are a bit more advanced. We’ve also got two videos to go along with the posts:

Home and Neighborhood Vocabulary

Learn how to talk about your home in Chinese by studying this post. Get the vocabulary words for the different rooms of the house, furniture, and more. Then you can move on and learn some vocabulary for talking about your neighborhood. You can also see what my ‘hood in Beijing looked like while you practice some of those words in this video:

Chinese Astronomy Lesson

I’ve always been interested in astronomy, and that didn’t change when I moved to China. In fact, there are lots of really interesting things to learn about when it comes to astronomy in Chinese. Learn lots of vocabulary and also get introduced to the Chinese concept of wu xing in this post.

Electronics/Phones

First, study this post of Chinese vocabulary for electronics. Then read up on how to buy a cell phone in Chinese. Finally, you’re ready to make a phone call in Chinese.

 

That should be enough to keep you busy well into next year, but rest assured we’ll be right back at it in 2017 with tons of new posts. We value your opinion and are here to help you in your quest to learn Chinese, so let us know what you’d like to see on the blog next year and we’ll do our best to post about whatever it is you want to learn.