Use this tool to add tone marks to pinyin or to convert tone number (e.g. hao3) to tone marks.

Although you can use the red buttons to add tone marks, we highly recommend you use the number method (e.g. hao3) for speed and placement of the accent above the correct vowel. [Hint: Type "v" for "ü"]
Note: You do not need to use this tool to enter pinyin in this dictionary.

10 Chinese Superfoods That Will Help Balance Your Qi

In China, there is an old saying: 药补不如食补 (yào bǔ bù rúshí bǔ) ‘the benefits of medicine as not as good as nutrition.’ Consuming an appropriate amount of certain foods is often found to have health benefits and this is strongly connected with Traditional Chinese Medicine. Whilst the word ‘superfood’ seems contemporary and faddy, food… Read More

Let’s Get Abstract With Chinese Ideograms

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

Mei Lan Fang: The King of Peking Opera

Image Source The introduction of dance into Chinese opera at the beginning of the last century massively changed how the Chinese people experienced opera. Previously, it was only listened to, but now strong aesthetic standards were being established and allowed people to express and experience the beauty of Opera in a different way. The person… Read More

Neolithic China And The Beginnings Of Chinese Civilization

What is ‘Chinese civilization’ 华夏文明 (huá xià wén míng)? Chinese civilization 华夏文明 (huá xià wén míng) begins, according to records, with the creation of the Xia dynasty 夏朝 (xià cháo) in 2070 BC. Although the Xia dynasty was the first ‘civilization’ in China, there were people who lived on the land well before Yu the Great… Read More