Simple Chinese Ideograms or Ideographs were the second type of character that were developed after pictographs. Pictographs are characters that look very similar to the word they describe, such as 口 ‘mouth’ and 手 ‘hand’. Ideograms, on the other hand are known as 指事 (zhǐ shì) or ‘indirect characters’ and are often symbolic characters depicting abstract concepts…. Read More
The Chinese farmer story is one of many tao parables that can be interpreted in many ways. These stories are part of Taoism, or Daoism, as it is more commonly known in the west. Taoism is a long-standing religion in China known for its philosophies and promotion of a harmonious lifestyle. The religion concentrates on… Read More
When we first start handwriting Chinese characters, we’re often unprepared and lack the knowledge to know how to begin. It’s difficult to comprehend if English or other Germanic language is your native tongue, the subtle nuances of strokes in a Chinese character. When we learn to write English, there are only 26 letters to learn,… Read More
If you don’t have time to study this now, just and read it later! We recently posted an article about the 6 types of Chinese characters and how they came to exist. This follow up post, takes a look at 20 pictograph or pictogram characters found in written Chinese. Although there is a slight explanation… Read More
We’ve created several articles in the past that gave you some Chinese songs and artists to listen to and learn Chinese with. This time, we’re delving into a ‘niche’ genre of Chinese music, ‘zhong guo feng’, that provides us with not only a fun and entertaining language learning resource but also a cultural one! Traditional… Read More
Very little is known about the origins of the written Chinese language. However, one of the most common stories is about the minister of mythical Emperor Huang Di, 仓颉 (cāng jié) Cang Jie, who allegedly saw the prints of birds and animal’s feet as being distinct and individual. He then drew his own pictures of… Read More