Essential Phrases for your Online Chinese Class
For most of us, a driving motivation to learn spoken Mandarin is its practical application. During a Chinese class, we typically want to focus on language we can actually use…
Magikid Nian: Guaranteed Spring Festival Fun for kids
Hey everyone! 新春快乐！The Chinese New Year is upon us, bringing in the Year of the Goat and its time to celebrate with other Mandarin learners, including the little ones. Here…
Peeling the Chinese Onion – Practical advice on how to approach the study of Mandarin
As a student of the Chinese language, I constantly find myself searching for metaphors to describe the learning process. Metaphors — ok, similes in this case, technically speaking — not only serve as a…
Decrypting the HSK 1 Exam – Reading Section
Hey friends, are you having any issues in the HSK practice tests? When you are doing HSK exercises concerning Reading Part, are you unable to capture main idea of the…
HSK1 Exam Tips and Advice on Listening Section
Hey friends, how is your Chinese learning going? Are you preparing the HSK exams? Are you having any issues in answering HSK exercises? Or are you wondering how to improve…
5 Useful Tips for Travel in China
Hey readers, first of all: 你们国庆节玩得好吗？All this October travelling reminds me of how one year ago, I was a clueless Indian guy struggling my way through the unintelligible plains of…
The Importance of Learning Mandarin Chinese Pronunciation
So, you've started the long interesting path called 'learning Mandarin Chinese', but what should you learn first? Characters and how to write them? Or would spoken Mandarin serve better? Really,…
A Beginner’s Guide to Asking Questions in Chinese: Particles and Sentence Patterns
Asking questions in Chinese is not only a vital component of language learning but also a fundamental skill for effective communication. Mandarin, being a tonal language, requires more than simply…
Expressing Location and Existence in Chinese: Using 在, 有 and 是
When describing the position of an object or person in a sentence, Mandarin Chinese commonly uses three verbs: 在(zài), 是(shì), and 有(yǒu). These verbs convey different nuances and can be…