pastenow
pastenow

Tag: Chinese

Chinese liquidity could spark the next bull run; but it won’t happen soon

In August, Hong Kong issued its first licenses for retail crypto. However despite this bullish news, China’s recent economic data shows slow growth due to huge debt and a troubled property market. Could China cause a crypto bull run China’s GDP growth since the 1980s has averag...

The Great Chinese Takeaway — Spies In British Parliament

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has raised ‘very strong concerns’ with Chinese Premier Li Qiang after MI5 discovered a few Chinese spies working in British parliament. Sunak was delighted to make everyone’s afternoon at the G20 really awkward by raising the issue over ...

The Great Chinese Takeaway — Spies In British Parliament

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has raised ‘very strong concerns’ with Chinese Premier Li Qiang after MI5 discovered a few Chinese spies working in British parliament. Sunak was delighted to make everyone’s afternoon at the G20 really awkward by raising the issue over ...

Kexin Feng — a courageous Chinese artist building a common land for artists between east and west

Kexin Feng is an expressionistic figurative painter whose work explores the depths of human emotion and experience. Through bold forms and unusual application of color with tools that aren’t the classical brushes, she creates paintings that are emotionally honest. Her experience close to the M...

How Chinese contemporary art went global

Chinese contemporary art is synonymous today with the works of artists such as one of China’s pioneering abstract artist Zhu Jingshi, award-winning beeswax sculpting artist Ren Ri and veteran member of avant garde art collective Ma Kelu. All three artists have been internat...

5 Chinese Contemporary Artists To Add To Your Collection

With a tradition spanning thousands of years and an artistic evolution that predates the renaissance in Europe by many hundreds of years, the role of Chinese art in human history is well established. And during the last three decades Chinese contemporary art and artists have also firmly arrived in t...

Three Major Narratives Behind the Contemporary Chinese Art

The name everybody thinks about when speaking of Contemporary Chinese Art is Ai Wei Wei. He and his sunflower seeds, and the grand installments made of individual units has always been the center of the Chinese art topic, whereas his political struggle and rebellion adds more spices to his art. O...

The Peak of Traditional Chinese Painting — — A Glimpse of Qi Baishi’s Paintings

Qi Baishi’s painting inherits the traditional brush and ink form of Chinese literati painting, but at the same time he is determined to innovate. He tempered his brush and ink, boldly set colors, integrated the common folk color habits of red and green into ink and wash, explored a new lang...

Chinese Incense History: The Renaissance to the end of Imperial Rule (Ming and Qing dynasties)

The prevalence of incense at the end of the Middle Ages not only continued but increased through the subsequent two dynasties, the Ming 明朝 (1368–1644) and the Qing 清朝 (pronounced “Ching” dynasty, 1636–1912). From the Ming through to the High Qing era (1683–1799)...

Chifa, the Chinese Peruvian Cuisine You Haven’t Heard About

It was our last night in Mexico City and we were starving and craving something different. Yes, we love tacos al pastor, birria, and mole, but we just wanted to take a break from Mexican food and diversify our palettes for a bit. A quick search on Google shocked me. There’s a chifa&nbs...

Japanese Restaurant vs. Chinese Restaurant:

I. Introduction In New York City, there are a number of Asian restaurants. Unlike American-Chinese restaurants like Panda Express, authentic Asian restaurants aim to attract customers who share similar tastes and evaluation standards with the owners of the restaurants. It would be interestin...

History of Taiwan: Chinese Immigration

Immigration? I thought Taiwan is China? Or part of China? Or wait… what is it? It’s way too simple to put the relationship we have with our good old neighbor in a short sentence. Our deep connection with China has to start with the early immigrants, not the government. In fact, for a...

Eating my way through the Chinese Zodiac in Taipei

Years before, when we were both still high school students in Joburg, we had lain around my room chain smoking and dreaming about leaving the suburbs behind forever. He had a longstanding date with New York. I was headed to Edinburgh. Now here I was, 24, freshly graduated and en route to Taipei to t...

Echoes of Relief: My Journey Through Tinnitus to Tranquility with Chinese Medicine

It was April last year, a night like any other until it wasn’t. Post my usual cold shower, as I nestled into bed, fatigued and unwell, a persistent noise invaded my silence. Initially, I blamed the dishwasher’s hum in the kitchen, but the noise continued, long after the machine had qu...

Parable of the Chinese Farmer

What is good arises with the bad. What is bad arises with the good. There is no in without an out, no up without a down, and no black without a white. Each depends on its opposite to be and not be. Flowing from extreme to extreme, from nuance to nuance, every element reflects every other element ...

How to Come Out to Chinese Parents

If this gets indexed by the search engines correctly, maybe what I write here can be of help to someone. First of all, coming out about your sexuality as opposed to coming out as trans is pretty different. Second of all, what gender you were assigned at birth will affect how often you might be to...

Chinese Horoscope 2024 for Those Born in 1964 (Wood Dragons)

The year of the Wood Dragon 2024 is a special year in the Chinese horoscope, as it marks the return of the same animal sign and element that you were born under. This means that you will experience a strong connection with the energy of the year, which can bring both benefits and challenges. ...

Chinese Horoscope 2024

The Chinese zodiac is based on a 12-year cycle, with each year associated with a specific animal sign. These animal signs are Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Pig. Each animal sign is also associated with one of the five elements: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal...

What Chinese Checkers Taught Me About Cultural Appropriation

The gnats descended on the photo of a woman with a tattoo of a Yin Yang symbol with outstretched wings. Angry that what should have remained a piece of pale fleshy fruit was instead garnished with an emblem representing an ancient Chinese philosophy, these gnats swarmed and hurled insults into the c...

Chinese Americans Were Banned From Testifying in Court Before This Murder Case

Before I dive into the heart of the matter, let me provide a little context. It was the 19th century, an era marked by intense economic growth, westward expansion, and, regrettably, a fair share of discrimination. In 1854, the California legislature passed a law that declared people of Chine...

The Invention of the Chinese Laundry

Small businesses have long been the bastion of first-generation immigrants starting out in America and hoping to build a life here. There was a time when Chinese laundries were as common as the corner bodega or mini-mart. Once industrial washing machines came along, though, many hand laundries went ...

Do Chinese Women Like American Men?

Many American men dream of being with a Chinese woman, and nowadays, it’s pretty possible! Chinese women are open to dating American men, appreciating their respect and love for Chinese culture. They’re also interested in exploring relationships that cross cultural boundaries, looking fo...

The Invention of the Chinese Laundry

Small businesses have long been the bastion of first-generation immigrants starting out in America and hoping to build a life here. There was a time when Chinese laundries were as common as the corner bodega or mini-mart. Once industrial washing machines came along, though, many hand laundries went ...

Jim Sam: The Legendary Chinese Cowboy

Without a doubt the most colorful character in Nicasio history is Jim Sam. His story is unique, and he left an imprint on generations of Nicasio residents. Jim Sam was a cowboy, cook, jockey, gambler, and for many Nicasio youngsters, the only Chinese man they had ever seen. What may have started as ...

A History of Chinese Food in the United States

While China has no national cuisine and comprises a rich, diverse, and unique array of dishes, Chinese food has taken on several denotations in the United States. Similar to fast food, it is quick, cheap, reliable, ubiquitous and tasty-- nearly every American can name a dish like General Tso’s...

Why I Avoid My Local Chinese-Run Massage Parlor (It’s Not What You Think)

Relaxing Station is the Chinese-run massage parlor in Boulder, Colorado. It’s housed in a non-descript single-level retail space in the middle of town, sandwiched between a diner and a nail salon. The large open room is set up in several zones: a few half-wall room dividers separate a receptio...

How being Chinese made me bigender

That was my birth. Before I was even born, my sex had been confirmed by the doctor months before. My father asked my mother to abort me, because I was not male. My mother refused and proceeded to carry me to term. In retaliation, my father went to sleep with another woman, who would eventually co...

Three Pillars of White Supremacy & Chinese Americans

I feel empowered when I can clearly situate myself and what I’m feeling within systems greater than myself. Understanding how I am oriented within the greater logics of our world is a tool that helps me build up my agency. It helps me understand the mundane as well as the normalized violence a...

Chinese New Year for Beginners

There are many stories about how Chinese New Year began, but one of the most popular involves a scary beast named Nian. Nian (“Year” in Chinese) would attack villages every year, especially children. The villagers discovered Nian’s fear of loud noises, bright lights, and the color ...

I Was the Best Man in a Chinese Wedding

Giving a relationship the ultimate title by joining together in marriage is a universal tradition. Yet, they do it a little differently in China. I was lucky enough to be asked to be the best man at my best friend Chen’s wedding this past year, and it was an experience I’ll never forg...

Happy Chinese New Year,

Wear traditional clothing-You can also find traditional clothing online. Wearing red is considered auspicious during this time. Red packets -Prepare and exchange red packets, containing money, as a symbol of good luck and blessings. Give these packets to children, unmarried family members, a...

Like — Reject — Match, The Design Process, 100 Followers, Digital Models, Chinese New Year, and more. Summary of Week 3, 2022

2022 has been amazing so far. Why? Because I’m finally creating projects from my heart and the support I’ve been getting from the web3 community. As an artist and a designer, I strive to create things from my heart; things that reflect my views and experiences. Everyone’s experi...

I Named Two Chinese Children

I decided the hangover would have recovered by 12 p.m. I’d be able to enjoy Friday and get myself to my Saturday classes in good enough condition. The training centre I worked for had: . The whole lesson was planned. . The book to read together. . The vocabulary. . The songs. ...

A fantastic tip to make learning Chinese easy & fun!

Have you tried learning Mandarin from any other language besides English? While pinyin is the defacto phonetic system for foreigners to start speaking Mandarin fast, Hindi and other native Indian languages ranging from Tamil, Bengali, Malayalam and Marathi all make learning Mandarin pronunciations e...

How I defeated the Chinese in China

Travelling in China for the first time, I spoke to everyone in Hindi. After a stressful first day of speaking broken English and masking my accent to try to make myself understood, I realized that speaking calmly in Hindi led to better communication and kept me humane. In the shops, hotels and st...

改革字 Reformed Chinese Characters

If you’re familiar with written Chinese, you most likely know about the endless, heated debate between Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese, both of which have their own pros and cons. Simplified reduces character strokes often at the cost of beauty while Traditional better preserve...

Why Don’t People Code in Chinese?

Chinese characters are perhaps one of the oldest written forms still in use today. When the characters were first invented, they were logograms resembling the shapes and forms of things they were used to describe. Over time, the characters have evolved to be written more easily, and most of the orig...

Converting Chinese characters to Pinyin or Jyutping on Google Sheets

If you study Mandarin, you probably know what Pinyin is. In Cantonese, Jyutping fulfills a similar role. Dictionaries will show you the Pinyin for individual words, but if you want to quickly convert whole sentences, such as when taking notes during a Chinese lesson, you need better tools.  ...

What if you’re irritable in Chinese?

他的脾氣很暴躁，很容易生氣。 Tā de píqì hěn bào zào, hěn róngyì shēng qì. His temper is very irritable, and he gets angry easily. And now you can talk about irritable people without letting them know what you’re talking ab...

How to learn Chinese…in the end

What do you want to have accomplished by the end (of your life)? If one of those things is “knowing Chinese,” you can start with learning the Chinese word for “in the end” or “eventually” in Chinese, which is: 至終 (zhì zhōng), and here’s how...

Getting angry in Chinese?

How do you tell people you’re angry in Chinese? The word for “getting angry” in Chinese is 生氣 (shēngqì; this is more commonly used) or 發怒 (fānù; this is more literary, and more intense) Let’s break it down: 生氣 (shēngqì) is made of&...

What’s more important in Mandarin Chinese?

It was March 1984. Someone had brought green tea for the nine of us. We all were genuinely excited. Not so much about the tea, rather that we finally would learn how they actually spoke nowadays. Two of our classmates already had dropped out. They found the classics in the previous semester exceedin...

Want to be a Chinese guinea pig?

Would you like to join me in a new, highly personalized Chinese coaching venture? I am looking for no more than 5 Chinese learners to personally coach for 12 weeks. The program will take you from zero (or wherever your current level is) to being able to speak Chinese with an accurate accent (y...

Chinese Numbers Part I: A Guide for Numbers up to 1000 in Mandarin

Numbers are everywhere in our life, and our life is built on top of numbers. We start with our fingers when we want to count how many pieces of pies to eat. We pick up the phone and dial a number, talking to that person at the end of the line. We count the stars when we can’t fall asl...

How much Chinese can you learn in 12 weeks?

If you got yesterday’s email, you may have noticed something a little different near the end. That’s right, in the next few weeks, you’ll be hearing more about an NEW personal Chinese coaching program I’ll be starting next month. Long story short, I want to pe...

Converting Chinese Characters to Pinyin/Jyutping on Google Sheets: now with more functionality

You can now pass a range of cells or a whole column to the PINYIN() / JYUTPING() fuctions, for example: PINYIN(A1:A20) this will convert cells A1 through A20 PINYIN(A:A) this will convert any chinese text present in column A. It will keep on converting as you add new rows in column...

Are you overflowing in Chinese?

Dude, what does that even mean? “Overflowing in Chinese”? (Dunno, but it rhymes) And today we kick off another day of Chinese learning with the Chinese word for “overflow,” which is 瀰漫 (mí màn). Let’s break it down: 瀰 (Mí): This...

How to take cover in Chinese

It’s commonly used in contexts relating to protection from the elements, such as sun or rain, but can also metaphorically refer to shielding from scrutiny or danger. 樹葉遮蔽了路燈的光。 Shù yè zhē bì le lù dēng de guāng. The leaves covered the lig...

Should You Learn Chinese Using Duolingo?

Since as far back as I could remember, I’ve always wanted to learn Chinese Mandarin. As a kid speaking the Teochew dialect, I always felt left out whenever my dad watched Chinese dramas and I couldn’t understand a single word. It was difficult just getting started in learning as a kid be...

How to make waves in Chinese

The word for giant waves or billows is: 波濤 (bōtāo). Here’s how it breaks down: 波 (Bō): This character means “wave.” It’s made of the water radical (氵) on the left, indicating its relation to water, and the character 皮 (pí) on the right, which mean...

How to describe your insomnia in Chinese

While 來 (lái) and 去 (qù) mean “to come and go” and refer to a kind of back-and-forth movement. So that’s that. Hope that was sufficiently interesting for you to remember and sufficiently boring to put you back to sleep, if you ARE reading this thanks to inso...

What role do swallows play in Chinese culture?

### What role do swallows play in Chinese culture? Did you know? In Chinese culture, swallows are a symbol of feminine grace and beauty. In fact, the main character in one of the most popular Chinese-Taiwanese period dramas back in the 1990s was named Little Sparrow: 小燕子 (xiǎo yà...

Are Chinese sparrows high on hemp?? (+ a brief sad story of the Chinese sparrow)

The top part is 广, a radical that can indicate a structure or vastness, and the bottom part is 林, which means “forest” or “woods” and is composed of two trees (木). Not sure why, but maybe as a memory hook, you could visualize a vast forest of hemp plants? 雀 (...

Why do Chinese parents call their kids ‘little devils’? (It’s not just teasing)

When parents call their kids “小鬼” (xiǎo guǐ), aka “little devil/ghost” they usually mean it in a teasing, loving way. But there’s another reason why parents sometimes call their kids little demons (or little pigs, or little dogs, or some other somewhat demeaning t...

Top 7 ways for making self-introduction in Chinese

This article will introduce you the 7 most common ways for making self-introduction in Chinese. Let’s look at the following examples together, shall we? Wǒ xìng… 1. 我姓… My last name is… Example: Wǒ xìng Wáng. 我姓王。 Click Her...

All sheep look alike in Chinese. (Not really, but…maybe?)

Have you ever heard the expression “chip off the old block”? It usually refers to a child who is LIKE his father, in looks or behavior. But when you want to say something is “LIKE” in Chinese, you say they are of “one likeness,” aka: 一样 (yí y&agra...

Chinese Grammar Structures : Verb Complements

This is one topic that really tripped me up when I started learning Chinese — you often need to specify what state your verbs are in when you are speaking. What does this mean in practice? Basically there are a handful of verb compliment words (some of which happen to be verbs themselves) t...

The Ultimate Guide to Chinese Online Learning

(There are plenty of resources available for learning Chinese on the internet, but for the purposes of this article, I am assuming that you are referring to Mandarin Chinese and Simplified Chinese Characters (to understand the difference, check out this blog post). Which resources you choose...

Begging for hate in Chinese (aka I-hate-you-but-not-really…)

If your kid said that to you in a rage, that would be pretty hurtful, right? But if your spouse said that to you in a teasing way after you play a(n innocuous) practical joke on them, that’s a totally different tone. And in Chinese, the word “討厭” (tǎoyàn) meaning ...

Wanna hear a creepy Chinese folktale?

Have you ever heard of a “tiger mom”? It’s the term for a style of strict Asian parenting that goes so far that some people claim this form of parenting is harsh and abusive. But “tiger mom” as a Chinese term, is about as Chinese as fortune cookies. That is to ...

Failing Chinese is…good for you?

You hate failure, I hate failure, we all hate failure. Or rather, what we hate is the FEELING that failure brings us. It makes you feel like a loser, makes you want to crawl under a rock and hide for a jillion years. But what if you looked at failure from another direction? Failure isn&r...

The Chinese way of answering “yes” and “no”

Students who often watch Chinese movies can easily notice that in Chinese, “yes” and “no” are rarely used to answer questions, which seems too written, and replaced by other interesting ways. This article introduces Several ways of “yes” and “no”Chines...

Chinese Handwriting Is Hard. This Is How I Improved Quickly.

During my study of Chinese language, I’ve encountered a problem with my handwriting skill. The five years I am trying to learn, I’ve got reasonably skilled in reading, listening and speaking, but writing only using a regular computer keyboard. In modern Chinese society, this is not a pro...

Chinese Dialects: Why our mother tongue matters

This is a phrase I frequently use with my elders during Chinese New Year. It literally means, “I can understand, but I can’t speak,” — a phrase I often use to describe my Cantonese proficiency, or rather, lack thereof. Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien, Teochew — are just so...

Improve your Chinese listening skills in 5 minutes

If there’s one takeaway from this 5-minute article, it’s that you are made aware of Yabla Chinese. Yabla is similar to the slow stories on Mandarin Corner, but instead of telling stories or folktales, it focuses mainly on conversations and interviews. You can rewind and slow down wh...

The surprising truth about Chinese grammar, 2

Chinese has been hyped up by the “big foreigners” I think the hype around Chinese tones, and how incredibly difficult (and therefore unique) they are, comes from foreigners who speak one of the big European languages. These are also the “foreign” languages that native Chin...

No Chinese On Babbel? Try These Alternatives

Quality is very important for language learning programs. If there are any significant mistakes found, then the credibility of their whole catalog would be called into question. Also, just imagine visiting China and finding out that the Chinese you learned were not accurate. I would be both embarras...

On Chinese Pronunciations and Chinese Naming Culture: About Sense & Sensibility (Cantonese-style)

The Voice Entertainment Group, a Hong Kong record label, talent agency and publisher of pop music, has another production with a Cantonese Chinese name related to Sense & Sensibility (《理性與感性》, Rationality & Sensibility). Of course, Sandy Chang Mei Yin (張美賢) is one of...

On Chinese Pronunciations and Chinese Naming Culture: About Sense & Alkalinity (Mandarin-style)

Iwonder if people in the world concern about “Sense & Sensibility” becoming “Sense & Alkalinity” someday. Why is it possible? It is because of the existence of Mr.Close-enough and Ms. Close-enough! Sense & Sensibility is a masterpiece written by&...