It will only take [est_time] to read this post! So, you’re wondering whether to study Chinese or not? Probably one of the biggest questions you have is, ‘how many Chinese characters do I have to learn?’ Problem is, there are lots of numbers flying about on the old interweb, such as: 50,000 (whaaaaat?) 91251. According… Read More
It will only take [est_time] to read this post! Did you study Chinese at home and then find that once you arrived in China you couldn’t understand a word anyone said? Don’t feel bad, seriously, you are not the first or the last person who has experienced this bizarre realisation! Sadly, most textbooks aren’t teaching… Read More
Chinatown is a great way to begin looking for Chinese characters in your home country. You’ll find useful characters or bigrams (2-character combinations) repeated frequently, which is handy if you’re a beginner studying Written Chinese! Most of these common Chinese symbols are found as traditional Chinese characters, but it’s often helpful to look at the… Read More
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
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