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2011年7月17日 星期日
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NYT > Taiwan: Kuomintang in Taiwan Wins 3 of 5 Votes
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2011年7月16日 星期六
NYT > Taiwan: Footnotes
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NYT > Taiwan: Taiwan’s City Elections Could Affect Relations With China
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2011年7月14日 星期四
NYT > Taiwan: Footnotes
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NYT > Taiwan: Taiwan’s City Elections Could Affect Relations With China
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2011年7月9日 星期六
NYT > Taiwan: Alcatel-Lucent Is Penalized in Bribery Investigation
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2011年7月5日 星期二
NYT > Taiwan: China and Taiwan Reunite Painting
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2011年7月1日 星期五
NYT > Taiwan: Confucius Peace Prize Surprises Taiwanese Politician
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2011年6月30日 星期四
NYT > Taiwan: Taiwan Ex-President Lee Charged With Corruption
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2011年6月29日 星期三
NYT > Taiwan: A.I.G. to Sell Taiwan Unit
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2011年6月25日 星期六
Northern Chinese (Mandarin) and Southern Dialects
The plethora of linguistic diversity of Chinese languages in the south and one unified Mandarin in the north might be related to the geographical characteristics of China’s north and south. “Mandarin dialects,” are spread across the Yellow Plain and the Loess Plateau which has a flat terrain that promotes travel and, consequently, easy contact among the people there. Ramsey observes that “this remarkable linguistic difference between a unified North and a fragmented South is a measure of how much life and society have been affected by geography.” As a result of this geography, a more uniform Northern Chinese area is created with mutually intelligible dialects. In contrast, mutually unintelligible dialects are spoken in the areas south of the Yangtze River because people there were barricaded by mountains and rivers.
The Northern dialects, with nearly 900 million speakers, are commonly subdivided into four major varieties: Northwestern, Northern proper, River, and Southwestern. The Northwestern variety refers to the dialects spoken around the Loess Plateau region with the ancient capital city Xi’an as its center. The Northern proper variety is spoken in the areas such as Hebei province, Shangdong province, and provinces in the northeast (Manchuria). This variety constitutes the basis of the standard dialect in modern China. The language was formed through large-scale immigration of the people residing in this area over the last several hundred years. Therefore, Northeastern dialects bear a strong resemblance to other Northern dialects as most migrants settling there originally moved from the Northern dialect area. The River variety spoken in the region north of the Yangtze River around the city of Nanjing was once considered the most prestigious dialect of the nation during and after the Ming dynasty. The Southwestern variety developed out of several waves of migrants settling in the provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan, and Guizhou from central China after the Ming dynasty.
During the late eighteenth century the Qing emperors dispatched troops to settle in these remote areas permanently with their families and encouraged large-scale immigration from Hubei and Hunan provinces to reclaim the land in southwestern China. Consequently, the Southwestern variety in many ways resembles the language spoken in Hubei province. Northern Chinese typically has fewer tones than Chinese dialects in the south. However, the most remarkable feature distinguishing Northern Chinese from the mutually unintelligible Southern Chinese dialects is perhaps the lack of stop endings that are prevalent in many Southern dialects like Wu, Yue, and Min.
Subscribe to the post comments feeds or Leave a trackbackChinese Writing System
The earliest fully developed Chinese writing that we know of today is the inscriptions on turtle shells and oxen shoulder blades, commonly known as oracle-bone script that appeared in the mid-second millennium BCE during the Late Shang dynasty.
Unlike a phonographic writing such as that of English where each letter of the alphabet encodes a phone, Chinese writing is a logographic system with each grapheme (or character) simultaneously encoding sounds and meaning at the level of the syllable. As a logographic system, Chinese writing has the great advantage that it is not necessary for a person who knows how to decode the writing system to learn to pronounce the characters in order to read the messages written in them.
Chinese writing is, nevertheless, not just a system of visual signs, or ideographs, representing various concepts or ideas totally divorced from pronunciation. A literary speaker of any Chinese dialect can immediately pronounce a Chinese character in her/his own dialect. The character, as a logographic form with a single-graph structure, does not represent any given phone within a word, but a syllable associated with a morpheme, Chinese writing as a system of morpheme–syllable representation is systematically phoneticized, i.e., the characters are readable.
In modern Chinese, graphemes, or characters, are known as hanzi, literally “Han-character” bearing the name of the Han dynasty (206 BCE to 220 CE). It was during the Han dynasty that Chinese writing was to a large extent standardized at a time when writing brushes, ink, ink stone and paper, wenfang sibao “four treasures in a study,” became the standard tools in Chinese writing.
Subscribe to the post comments feeds or Leave a trackbackChinese language and Culture
The Chinese language, which is a communication system used by the Chinese people on a daily basis to accomplish various goals in life, unavoidably carries many features reflecting some of the commonly held social beliefs in their culture. Culture can be roughly defined as socially learned patterns of behavior and interpretive practices, in which language plays a most important part. In fact, the ways in which many Chinese words, idioms, popular sayings, metaphors, and neologisms are widely used among the Chinese correspond to the cultural beliefs and experiences that have shaped China as a country over the last three millennia.
Furthermore, the Chinese people, who have been in contact with many foreign cultures and languages throughout history, have also embraced and integrated into their own culture many foreign concepts and ideas. The structures of neologisms including many Chinese words of European origin and the morpheme–syllable Chinese writing system are examined together to show the importance of meaning in coining neologisms in Chinese. For example, the modern Chinese usage of culture representing culture was adopted from Japanese as it was first extensively used in Japan as a neologized lexical item representing the European word culture in the nineteenth century. In the nineteenth century the Japanese borrowed these two Chinese graphemes to create a new word to translate the European word culture into Japanese. Later, this neologized Japanese word was reintroduced into Chinese, or returned to China, to translate the same European word.
Subscribe to the post comments feeds or Leave a trackbackLearn the language that is spoken by the largest number of people in the world
Those with a grasp of (Mandarin) Chinese will have a cutting edge over others as China is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, and in the times to come, Mandarin will exert an influence that nobody will be able to ignore.
Language specialist ESL offers unparalleled opportunities for those who have a desire to Learn (Mandarin) Chinese in China. The beautiful monumental city of Beijing has two partner language schools of ESL: Language School Mandarin House and Language School Sprachcaffe.
Language School Mandarin House in Beijing is located in the China Central Place, where there is no dearth of ultramodern hostels, shops, banks international offices and all that. The school offers optimal conditions to Learn (Mandarin) Chinese in China. The school has peaceful, professional and pleasant environment. The building is equipped with all modern facilities well-equipped classrooms and cafe, where students can relax and chat with other students after their classes.
Housed in the Cultural Palace in the interior of the Tartar city of the Manchus, Language School Sprachcaffe also offers Junior Chinese (Mandarin) courses in China. It features bright and spacious classrooms, a cafeteria, and almost all modern facilities that allow students to learn Mandarin in an intensive way in a relaxed environment.
Language School International house in Qingdao offers high-quality Mandarin courses focused mainly on communication. This school is divided into two course centres: East and West. Both centres feature well-equipped, air-conditioned classrooms, Internet access, cafeterias, spacious lounge, where students can relax.
Language School Mandarin House in Shanghai, which is situated at the heart of the city centre, near to the pedestrian Nanjing Road, is one of the best language schools to Learn (Mandarin) Chinese in China. It is surrounded by restaurants, cafes and shops that cater to diverse needs of students. The school has a qualified, trained and dedicated teaching staff that is always ready to assist students. The school has 22 well-equipped classrooms, a multimedia room that offers free access to Internet and WiFi.
Language school International House in Xi’an also offers Junior Chinese (Mandarin) courses in China. This school is situated at the center of Xi’an- the Capital of the Chinese province of Shaanxi. International House in Xi’an is housed in a modern, two-storey building and features 16 well-equipped classrooms, a library, a student lounge, a kitchen,? a computer room with free Internet access.
Subscribe to the post comments feeds or Leave a trackbackChinese, Zhongwen, Hanyu
Chinese, as a language name in English, refers to the Sinitic subgroup of Sino-Tibetan languages in Asia. But it can be translated into various Chinese nouns for the language encompassing many different ideas depending on the context.
First of all, Chinese can be translated as zhongwen generally referring to the language. Zhongwen is also the right term to use for the academic discipline in studying Chinese language and literature, such as zhongwenxi for the Chinese department in a university setting.
Second, the term hanyu “Han language” is used in the context contrasting the languages spoken by the Han nationality that makes up 92% of the 1.3 billion Chinese citizens of the People’s Republic with all of the non-Han languages spoken in China and the rest of the world. Therefore, foreign students who are now learning Chinese are said to be learning hanyu.
Third, as hanyu is a general term for the languages, many of which are mutually unintelligible among speakers of different varieties of Han language, it by default refers to the standard dialect of the country that is known as putonghua literally meaning “common language” in the People’s Republic. Putonghua is a constructed norm based upon the language, a variety of Northern Chinese, spoken in the capital city, Beijing. Moreover, Chinese corresponds to a number of Chinese equivalents depending on the given speech community.
Traditionally, Han-Chinese is divided into seven major dialect groups, Mandarin (or beifanghua Northern Chinese),Wu, Xiang, Gan, Kejia (Hakka), Yue (Cantonese), and Min. Though sharing a large number of cognates, or words of common origin, Chinese dialects vary most strikingly in their sound systems. All Chinese dialects have tones with different pitch contours for each syllable.
Subscribe to the post comments feeds or Leave a trackback2011年6月24日 星期五
Chinese Morphology
Chinese Morphology is the study of words and word-making. Its goal is to understand the meaning in the relationships between words and the ways in which they are expressed, including how grammatical relationships are marked in different languages. For example, plurality is explicitly marked by an -s on English nouns, e.g., book as a singular noun and books as a plural noun. Furthermore, the relationships between words may require some morphological changes in different parts of a sentence. For instance, the verb form varies depending on the person and number of the subject noun phrase in an English sentence such as This book is very interesting vs. These books are very interesting in which the subjects and verbs have an agreement relationship, i.e., a third person singular, subjective noun corresponds to the copular verb is and a third person plural subjective noun to a different copular verb are.
Cross-linguistically, the minimal unit of meaning is commonly called a morpheme, and it is subdivided into two major types, bound and free. Bound morphemes primarily refer to affixes such as the English plural marker –s which only makes sense when attached to a nominal stem. Alternatively, a noun like book is called a free morpheme because it makes sense all by itself and refers to something in the real world, or is called a stem for an affix to be attached to.
Affixes are prefixes such as the English un- in unhappy and suffixes such as the English -able in laughable. Affixes can also be derivational or inflectional. In general, inflectional affixes refer to elements such as the plural marker –s in English and are fewer in number than derivational affixes as the former function to create forms of words with additional grammatical meaning such as plurality. Other inflectional morphemes in English include -ed indicating past tense, -ing progressive, -’s possessive, -er comparative, -est superlative, etc. Derivational morphemes such as -able in English tend to be more numerous than inflectional affixes in a language as they operate on a stem, or a root, like laugh resulting in a new word laughable. Other derivational affixes in English include re- in replay, -ment in establishment, -y in lucky, etc. Finally, not all bound morphemes are affixes, there are also bound roots such as –sist in English that constitutes the root, or stem, for derivational processes such as to generate words like resist, consist, subsist in spite of the fact that they cannot occur by themselves to make sense in a language, just like morphologically bound affixes. Although they are not free morphemes that make up most stems, they still provide a base form to shape new words with other derivational affixes in a language.
Compared to English, the boundary of a Chinese word is far from transparent, as many morphological markers like affixes are often non-existent because the Chinese language does not mark tense, or parts of speech, morphologically. The fluidity of the concept “word” in Chinese has even motivated some to claim (Hoosain 1992, Zhang 1992) that morphemes are more versatile in Chinese than other languages and more indeterminate with respect to their bound–free status. The notion of “word”, known as c? in Chinese, is neither a particularly intuitive concept nor easily defined. Furthermore, Chinese orthography requires no space between characters, regardless of their morphological status, i.e., no distinction is made in writing between free and bound morphemes, which obscures their existence in the speaker’s mindset. On the other hand, wenz? “characters” that are used to represent each morpheme syllable with a character regardless of its morphological status appear to be a more natural concept. Perhaps because of this reason, nearly all Chinese dictionaries list vocabularies through characters, instead of words. Thus dictionaries are most commonly referred to as z?dian, literally “character standards.”
Subscribe to the post comments feeds or Leave a trackbackAbout Spoken Chinese
Chinese is the language of over one billion speakers. Several dialect families of Chinese exist, each in turn consisting of many dialects. Although different dialect families are often mutually unintelligible, systematic correspondences (e.g., in lexicon and syntax) exist among them, making it easy for speakers of one dialect to pick up another relatively quickly. The largest dialect family is the Northern family, which consists of over 70% of all Chinese speakers. Standard or Mandarin Chinese is a member of the Northern family and is based on the pronunciation of the Beijing dialect. Interestingly, most speakers of Standard Chinese have another dialect as their first tongues and only less than one percent of them speak without some degree of accent.
There are 22 consonants in Mandarin Chinese. Compared with English, the distribution of consonants in Mandarin Chinese is more closely dependent on the syllable position, and the syllable structure is much simpler. There are two types of syllables - full and weak ones - in Mandarin Chinese. The former has intrinsic, underlying tone and is long, while the latter has no intrinsic tone and is short. A full syllable may change to a weak one, losing its intrinsic tone and undergoing syllable rime reduction and shortening (similar to syllable reduction in English).
In contrast to English which has over 10,000 (mono) syllables, Mandarin Chinese has only about 400 syllables excluding tones (and 1300 including tones). Relatively simple phonological constraints can sufficiently describe the way in which many available syllables are excluded as being valid ones in Mandarin Chinese.
The special characteristics in spoken Chinese signal properties consist of tonality and fundamental frequency variations that signal the lexical identity in the language in addition to paralinguistic information. Speech analysis techniques for fundamental frequency or pitch extraction are therefore more important for Chinese than for the non-tonal languages such as English. Recent research has provided both the production and perceptual accounts for tonal variations in spoken Chinese, where the articulatory constraint on the perception processing has been quantified.
Subscribe to the post comments feeds or Leave a trackbackMandarin Chinese Spoken Languages, Transcription Systems and Character Sets
Many dialects are spoken in China. Mandarin is a category of related Chinese dialects spoken in most of the northern, central, and western parts of China. However, Mandarin, as it is known to the world, refers to standard Mandarin (or modern standard Chinese) which is based on the Mandarin dialect spoken in Beijing. Standard Mandarin is the official spoken language known as Putonghua in China. Standard Mandarin is also one of the five official languages of the United Nations, and is used in many international organizations. Phonologic descriptions show that the structural pattern of a Mandarin syllable is an optional initial consonant followed by the vowel, and then optionally followed by a velar or alveolar nasal ending. Another component of the Mandarin syllable is the tone which mainly specifies the syllable’s pitch pattern. Technically, a syllable is presented in terms of its initial, final, and tone. Mandarin is a tonal language because the tones, just like consonants and vowels, are used to distinguish words from each other.
Chinese linguists have proposed various transcription systems for Mandarin. But the most popular ones are Hanyu Pinyin. Hanyu Pinyin was accepted as the official transcription system for the Chinese language in 1958 by the government of China. The transcription system is used in the input of Chinese characters in computer systems.
Today, there are two Chinese character sets used by Chinese-language users, i.e., the traditional Chinese characters and the simplified Chinese characters. The traditional Chinese characters have been used since the 5th century. This character set is still being used in some overseas Chinese communities today. The simplified Chinese characters originate from the official character simplification during 1950s and 1960s. Now, this set of simplified Chinese characters is the official writing system in China, and is accepted by the United Nations. In computer systems, different codes are used for these two character sets. The Guobiao code (GB) is a national standard character encoding in China. It refers to the GB 2312-80 set issued in 1981, or the GB 18030-2000 set issued in 2000. There are 6,763 Chinese characters in the GB 3212-80 code set.
Mandarin Chinese is referred to as monosyllabic because the majority of words are one syllable in length. This is true for classical Chinese, but no longer true for modern Chinese. A large number of polysyllabic words are used today in daily spoken Chinese. One syllable when uttered with different tones corresponds to different characters. A word in polysyllabic form is written with two or more characters. Since Chinese texts have no spacing between words, extra effort is required to segment a sentence into word-parts. Because of these particular characteristics, the design of Chinese language corpora needs extra considerations. Most of the Chinese spoken language processing systems developed recently deal with standard Mandarin. Few of them cater for other dialects, such as Cantonese, Min-nan, Hakka, Wu, etc.
Subscribe to the post comments feeds or Leave a trackbackThe Chinese Language and Chinese Character
The Chinese language, or group of related languages, is spoken by the Hans, who constitute 94 per cent of China’s population. One word for the language in Chinese is Hanyu, the Han language. Different, non-Han languages are spoken by the other 6 per cent of the population, the so-called minority peoples, such as the Mongols and the Tibetans.
The Chinese language is divided into a number of major dialects (with many sub-dialects). Speakers of different dialects in some cases find each other unintelligible, but dialects are brought together by the fact that they share a common script. The main and official dialect, which is known by a number of names: Mandarin, modern standard Chinese, or Putonghua (’common speech’). It is spoken in its various sub-dialect forms by almost three quarters of the Hans across the northern, central and western regions of China, but its standard pronunciation and grammar are associated with the Beijing area of north China, though not with Beijing city itself. The other dialects are Wu (spoken in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, including Shanghai), Xiang (in Hunan), Cantonese (in Guangdong), Min (in Fujian), Hakka (in northeast Guangdong and other southern provinces) and Gan (in Jiangxi).
Cantonese, Min and Hakka are widely spoken among overseas Chinese. In Taiwan a form of Min dialect is used, though the official language is Mandarin, and called there guoyu (’national language’). Mandarin in also widely used in Singapore, where it is known as huayu (’Chinese language’). Elsewhere, Chinese emigrants took their particular dialects with them, and in Britain, for instance, the Chinese people, who are largely from Hong Kong, almost all speak Cantonese.
The Chinese character script existed virtually unchanged for two thousand years until a range of simplified forms began to be introduced by the mainland Chinese government in the 1950s. These simplified characters are used throughout China and increasingly in Chinese communities outside China.
The formal written language of China until the early decades of the twentieth century was Classical Chinese, which, as the vehicle for all publicly acknowledged literature and for official documentation, was at the heart of the Chinese cultural tradition. However, it had grown remote from spoken Chinese in syntax and lexis, and had a position somewhat akin to medieval Latin in relation to the Romance languages it had spawned. It was left behind by modern written styles, based on spoken Chinese, which evolved over the last hundred years, but echoes of Classical Chinese remain in contemporary speech and writing, especially in literary and aphoristic registers.
Subscribe to the post comments feeds or Leave a trackbackThe Strokes of Chinese Writing
The Chinese character for “cloud” was written as in oracle-bone script and in bronze script, both of which have a curvy line in the bottom somewhat resembling a piece of floating cloud. However, after Chinese script was standardized after the Han dynasty, various Chinese graphemes can be analyzed in terms of strokes, i.e., lines, dots, and hooks that are draw non a piece of paper with a writing instrument, forming Chinese characters to codify words. For example, in standard script, the earlier undulant and angular lines were replaced by straighter and more regular lines that are more compatible with brushwork techniques. In so doing different kinds of strokes can be easily identified. A Chinese character is supposed to be written stroke by stroke. Chinese children are taught to write different strokes in each Chinese character by strictly following stroke order rules.
There are many practical reasons for students to learn these stroke-order rules. For example, writing is considered to be a form of art in Chinese culture. These rules may help students develop some necessary skills in placing various strokes proportionally to produce aesthetically acceptable Chinese characters. Moreover, one could not use many Chinese dictionaries effectively without knowing the order of strokes, as most dictionary index systems draw on stroke-order rules as a useful way to help users find the relevant entries of a given Chinese character. Even after the romanized spelling system was adopted, most Chinese dictionaries still provide an index relying on the number of strokes because there are many people who may not be familiar with either the romanized system adopted in a given dictionary or the pronunciation, or pronunciations, of a given Chinese character. For example, in the most widely used The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary in China, there is a two-step index system that is divided into two sections, “initial radical” and “radicals guide,” both of which depend heavily on the number of strokes. In this dictionary, that contains over 56,000 words, about 200 initial radicals are recognized. A user needs to count the number of strokes in the initial radical of a Chinese character, or the first Chinese character if the word has more than one Chinese character, to find the section that has all the Chinese characters with the same initial radical. Then, the user needs to count the number of strokes in the remainder of the Chinese character to find the page number where all the relevant entries beginning with the Chinese character will be listed.
Subscribe to the post comments feeds or Leave a trackback2011年6月22日 星期三
The Basics about Chinese Characters
There are over 80,000 Chinese characters, but most of them are seldom used today. So how many Chinese characters do you need to know? For basic reading and writing of modern Chinese, you only need a few thousands. Here are the coverage rates of the most frequently used Chinese characters:
Most frequently used 1,000 characters: ~90% (Coverage rate)
Most frequently used 2,500 characters: 98.0% (Coverage rate)
Most frequently used 3,500 characters: 99.5% (Coverage rate)
For an English word, the Chinese translation (or the Chinese 'word') often consists of two or more Chinese characters. You should use them together and read them from left to right. If you want to arrange them vertically, the one on the leftmost should go to the top. See an example for the word 'English' below:
As you can see, there are two Chinese characters for English (the language), which are ying1 yu3 in Pinyin. Pinyin is the international standard romanization scheme for Chinese characters, which is useful for learning the phonetics of Mandarin. There are four tones in Pinyin and we use the numbers here, i.e., 1, 2, 3, and 4, to depict the four tones. If you want to learn Mandarin (or Pu3 Tong1 Hua4), you have to master the four tones of the language. However, one pinyin usually represents many Chinese characters. For example, han4 can depict the Chinese characters for sweet, drought, brave, Chinese, etc. Thus you have to learn the Chinese characters to master the language.
Chinese is not alphabetic so the writing is not related to its phonetics. We don't translate the Western alphabet since the letters have no meaning, and we do use the letters in writings, especially in scientific writings.
There are many styles of Chinese writing. Some of the styles are more ancient than others. In general, there are large differences among the styles, even though some of the styles are quite close. Different styles of Chinese characters are naturally used according to the purposes of the writing, such as Xiaozhuan mainly used for seal carving now. Besides the different styles, there are also two forms of Chinese characters, the simplified and the traditional. The simplified is the standard writing form employed in the mainland of China and the traditional form is mainly used in Taiwan and Hong Kong. There are total 2,235 simplified characters contained in the 'Simplified Character Table' published in 1964 by the Chinese government, so the majority of the Chinese characters are the same in the two forms, though the count of commonly-used Chinese characters is only about 3,500.
All the Chinese characters on our site are Kaiti (the standard style) in the simplified form.
Japanese Kanji are originally from China so most of them are the same as their corresponding Chinese characters, but Japanese kanji only contain a small collection of Chinese characters. There are a lot more Chinese characters not included in Japanese Kanji. Kanji are used less and less now in Japan. You don't see a lot of Kanji in a modern Japanese book anymore. If you need more info about Kanji, check out our Japanese Language site.
Questions About Chinese Names
Origin of Chinese Characters
Oracle Bone Inscriptions
Back to Frequently Asked Chinese Characters
Chinese Character nan2 -- Man
Fascinating Chinese Characters 
Chinese Characters?>? N
The top part of the character is a tian2 (farmland) and the bottom is a li4 (strength, power). So it is easy to understand that a man is someone working on farmland and having power and strength. There are many Chinese characters formed this way.
The top part of the character is a tian2 (farmland) and the bottom is a li4 (strength, power). So it is easy to understand that a man is someone working on farmland and having power and strength. There are many Chinese characters formed this way.
Pronunciation: nan2 
Meaning: man; male; son.
Related Characters:
Nv3 - woman; female
Li4 - power; strength
Tian2 - farmland; field
Chinese Character T-shirts, Caps, Mugs, Buttons, and more.
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Chinese Daily Manners
China is known as a state of etiquette and ceremonies. Many proverbs have been passed down from generation to generation such as 'civility costs nothing' or 'courtesy demands reciprocity' and so on. For instance, there is an interesting short story. Once upon a time, a man went on a long tour to visit his friend with a swan as a gift. But it escaped from the cage on the way and in his effort to catch it, he got hold of nothing but a feather. Instead of returning home, he continued his journey with the swan feather. When his friend received this unexpected gift, he was deeply moved by the story as well as the sincerity. And the saying 'the gift is nothing much, but it's the thought that counts.' was spread far and wide.
Chinese used to cup one hand in the other before the chest as a salute. This tradition has a history of more than 2000 years and nowadays it is seldom used except in the Spring Festival. And shaking hands is more popular and appropriate on some formal occasions. Bowing, as to convey respect to the higher level, is often used by the lower like subordinates, students, and attendants. But at present Chinese youngsters tend to simply nod as a greeting. To some extent this evolution reflects the ever-increasing paces of modern life.
It is common social practice to introduce the junior to the senior, or the familiar to the unfamiliar. When you start a talk with a stranger, the topics such as weather, food, or hobbies may be good choices to break the ice. To a man, a chat about current affairs, sports, stock market or his job can usually go on smoothly. Similar to Western customs, you should be cautious to ask a woman private questions. However, relaxing talks about her job or family life will never put you into danger. She is usually glad to offer you some advice on how to cook Chinese food or get accustomed to local life. Things will be quite different when you've made acquaintance with them. Implicit as Chinese are said to be, they are actually humorous enough to appreciate the exaggerated jokes of Americans.
As is said above, Chinese consider gifts as an important part to show courtesy. It is appropriate to give gifts on occasions such as festival, birthday, wedding, or visiting a patient. If you are invited to a family party, small gifts like wine, tea, cigarettes, or candies are welcomed. Also fruit, pastries, and flowers are a safe choice. As to other things, you should pay a little attention to the cultural differences. Contrary to Westerners, odd numbers are thought to be unfortunate. So wedding gifts and birthday gifts for the aged are always sent in pairs for the old saying goes that blessings come in pairs. Though four is an even number, it reads like death in Chinese thus is avoided. So is pear for being a homophone of separation. And a gift of clock sounds like attending other's funeral so it is a taboo, too. As connected with death and sorrow, black and white are also the last in the choice. Gift giving is unsuitable in public except for some souvenirs. Your good intentions or gratitude should be given priority to but not the value of the gifts. Otherwise the receiver may mistake it for a bribe.
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Written by our column writer Hao Zhuo.
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