According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, emotions are connected to specific organs. When emotions are suppressed or inhibited this can cause disease or serious physical complaints. By ‘balancing’ the organ associated with that emotion, the emotion will also rebalance. In order to make a diagnosis, a practitioner of TCM will ask many questions about the patient’s… Read More
Eating and drinking in Chinese culture is quite different to that of the West. The idea of Chinese dining etiquette is said to have come from the Zhou Dynasty (1045-256 BC) and is often a noisy and social affair. Dining in restaurants with friends, family or colleagues is enveloped in respect for your elders and… Read More
You’ve made friends, maybe you’ve even gone on a date or two. Now it’s time to have your first big fight in Chinese! Of course, I’m not condoning violence or being nasty in general, but sometimes you just need to blow off some steam and say what you really think. Enjoy another of our no-frills… Read More
Food vocabulary in any language is probably the most fun and also most challenging to learn because there are just so many words to get to grips with. Although some food words share the same Chinese, most of the time this can actually make learning new words easier because you simply add an extra character… Read More
We have discussed expressing knowledge and ability in previous articles. Before moving on to giving advice and opinions, you might want to read or review our posts on 认识 and 知道 and The Three Cans: 会, 可以 and 能. Sharing your own opinions in Chinese is the next step to being able to communicate with friends… Read More
British people (myself being one) are known for their love of complaining about the weather. In winter it’s too cold, in summer it’s too hot (you may laugh), if it rains it’s too wet, when it doesn’t it’s too dry. In China, it is much the same; a downpour can produce a gaggle of 阿姨 (ā yí) announcing… Read More