上 and 下 in Chinese: Beyond the Basic “Up” and “Down”
Have you ever stopped to consider how often you use the words 上(shàng) and 下(xià) in your daily life? These two characters are so ubiquitous in the Chinese language that…
Using Pleco as Your Guide to Daily Life in China
The Pleco app serves as a dictionary for the Chinese learner allowing them to search by pinyin, or by radical. While the dictionary part of the app is free, it…
The Many Uses of “Hand” in Chinese
If we say someone is clever and deft, we mean he or she is quick-witted and nimble-fingered and it is called “心灵手巧” (xīn ling shǒu qiǎo) in Chinese. “手” (shǒu)（hand）is…
Check List: Do You Really Use All the Online Tools for Learning Mandarin?
The development of internet technologies has been constantly changing the process of learning a foreign language, but are you sure that you use a maximum of the available online tools?…
Live in China, Live the Language —— “Sink-or-Swim” Education Experiment
Live The Language is a Mandarin school in Beijing, and it`s also the only school which focuses on immersion learning in China so far. Andreas is the founder and he…
Slang Similarities in English and Chinese
In the process of learning Chinese, you may find that many slangs or idioms between Chinese and English are similar, like in English “a piece of cake”and in Chinese “小菜一碟…
Mandarin You Need that You Can’t Find in a Textbook
As an English teacher in the Guandong province for the last five weeks, I’ve noticed many things in my daily conversations that none of the Chinese textbooks I studied from…
Learning about Chinese Culture “Off the Great Wall”
If you really want to master a language, you should not ignore the spectacular culture associated with it. If you are interested in Chinese and the Chinese culture, you should…
Top 3 Tips for Taking Notes while Learning Chinese
Hello everyone! After revealing my “Tops Secret about learning Mandarin,” today I'm focusing on the details of your trusty companion—the notebook you write in and read every single day. In…
Learn How to Study Chinese Bigrams with WCC Bigrams App
The WCC Bigrams App is a flashcard app that drills the learner on the most common two-character Chinese words (bigrams) that show up in written text. It gives you the…