Nearly 15 years after Hong Kong was returned to China, the Wall Street Journal reports that the new census results show the former British colony is now replacing English with Mandarin as the city's most commonly spoken second language. more ›

Yesterday on Line 8, a rebellious metro driver decided to ignore the Metro authority's provisions to give announcements only in standard Mandarin, and instead used Shanghainese to announce the stops. more ›

Okay we still can't get our hands on an embed code yet, but you can watch part of Jon Huntsman's interview on the Colbert Report here. He talks about his Mormonism and, of course, speaks some Chinese. (Just can't get enough of making those strange sounds come out of a white dude's mouth, eh America?) Ever the charmer, Huntsman obliges the usual request by saying, in Mandarin, "I wish you'd be my running mate, Stephen" (我很想你做我的副美国总统). more ›

With good friends like Pakistan, who needs to spend money building Confucius Institutes? more ›

What does your Chinese accent say about you? Assuming you've gotten past the stage so your accent doesn't scream out "laowai!" anymore, what kind of an image are you projecting via your speech? Should you have gone to Beijing for those Mandarin lessons after all? ChinesePod writer Jenny Zhu shares her insights. For instance, did you know the way your taxi driver pronounces Hengshan Lu as "Hensan Lu" used to be the signifier of glamour and sexiness? Yeah, not so much now, eh? more ›

Mandarin spoken with a Shanghai accent is now being "recorded for posterity," according to the Shanghai Language Committee Office. Not Shanghainese (which obviously is already considered a dialect0, but that hometown way of talking that causes cabbies to only understand "Hengshan Lu" when you pronounce it "Hengsan Lu" or "Panyu Lu" when you pronounce it "Fanyu Lu." Why bother with the protection? Because ""Shanghai-accented Putonghua has been influential in the city," one official said. more ›

"The BBC Chinese Service has made its final radio broadcast in Mandarin after nearly 70 years. Shortwave programming in Mandarin is a casualty of spending cuts announced by the BBC World Service in January. From now on, Mandarin-speakers will be served only by the BBC's Chinese-language websites; a weekly radio broadcast in Cantonese will continue. BBC managers say they have had to make tough choices because of a 16% cut in UK government funding. BBC World Service Mandarin programming began back in 1941, pre-dating by eight years the proclamation of the People's Republic of China." [BBC] more ›

We already know of a few really great Mandarin learning sites and dictionaries but Lexicalist is our latest fancy. It's a Chinese/English dictionary and those we have a'plenty. However aside from the denotation, it also shows you how the usage of the character fares by province and by gender. more ›

Well, here's something we didn't know: Education First (EF), better known through their subsidiary English First here in mainland China, is also in the Chinese language business. And they want you to learn the language with them in Beijing. Check out this nice little commercial created for them by the Stockhom-based production house Camp David. more ›

In our ongoing Threesday feature, Shanghaiist takes the time to count out three of....well, whatever catches our fancy that week. Right now, we're feeling inspired to brush up on our Chinese skills. Yeah, we know we live in China's most "western" city, but that's still no excuse not to try. Whether you're on a quest to master the language or just want to converse with the cabbie, make life easier on yourself and allow these sites to help you out. more ›

Shanghaiist lists all the live music performances you might want to check out from now to Sunday this week. For fun things that aren't live music, take a look at Pencil This In (posted every Monday) and check our calendar. more ›

“This approval is a significant change for Chinese language users worldwide,” said Rod Beckstrom, President and Chief Executive Officer of ICANN. “One fifth of the world speaks Chinese and that means we just increased the potential online accessibility for roughly a billion people.”

If you've got a Nokia S60 series and happen to speak Chinese, you can now use Google voice search on your mobile in China. The new service, the first non-English voice search Google has released, is one of many recent attempts to wrestle some more of the market away from current leader Baidu. According to the company, it works best with sharper Mandarin accents (Beijingers might have a little more trouble being understood) and will be rolled out to other phones sometime soon. more ›

• China's 8.9% Growth? No Way [Forbes]"On Oct. 22, Beijing announced that gross domestic product grew by 8.9% in the third quarter of 2009 compared with the corresponding period last year. The National Bureau of Statistics also reported that growth for the first three quarters was up 7.7%. How could it not have been? Since last November, Beijing has spent perhaps as much as $900 billion-from its own funds as well as those of the larger state banks-to jump start its $4.3 trillion economy. No government can disburse that amount of cash without creating some economic activity."
• China's push for oil in Gulf of Mexico puts U.S. in awkward spot [LA Times]"China's push to enter U.S. turf comes four years after CNOOC's $18.5-billion bid to buy Unocal Corp. was scuttled by Congress on national security grounds. The El Segundo oil firm eventually merged with Chevron Corp. of San Ramon. Whether CNOOC's second attempt to lock up U.S. petroleum assets will trigger a similar political backlash remains to be seen. The sour U.S. economy and the need for Washington and Beijing to cooperate on potentially larger issues could mute any outcry."
• The story of China Incorporated [China Daily] "Twenty-five years ago, Megatrends was a must-read for any Chinese who was keen to know about the world - not just the world as it was, but the world that would be. And that included higher officials who were unaccustomed to foreign theorizing other than that by Marx and Lenin. By some estimate, the book sold some 20 million copies in China. The original English version was published two years earlier, in 1982, and stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for two years. Last month, John Naisbitt, the author of Megatrends, came out with China's Megatrends. This time, the Chinese edition debuted before the English original."
• Voices of Power Transcript: Chris Lu [Washington Post] "Chris Lu has known President Obama since they attended Harvard Law School together, but they cemented their friendship when Obama hired him in 2004 for his Senate staff. He's the Cabinet secretary — a title that belies an intense assignment as chief intermediary between the White House and the federal agencies. On a daily basis, his job is not only to convey the president's views and expectations to all the department heads and keep them on message, but also to help them resolve their issues with the White House. The son of Chinese immigrants, Lu is one of the highest-ranking Asian Americans in the administration. "
• A special report on China and America: : The price of cleanliness [The Economist] "The Beijing authorities built Taiyanggong to impress the world in the run-up to the Olympic games which opened in the city in August 2008—on the same day that America opened a new embassy in Beijing (heated, American officials say proudly, by Taiyanggong). Some 5,000 workers toiled night and day to deliver on the Chinese government’s promise to provide an environmentally friendly power source for the games. Taiyanggong was connected to the grid with nearly eight months to spare…Now the power station’s owners, led by a municipal state-owned company, are struggling to make it work financially. "
• Mandarin Eclipses Cantonese, Changing the Sound of Chinatown [NYTimes] "He grew up playing in the narrow, crowded streets of Manhattan’s Chinatown. He has lived and worked there for all his 61 years. But as Wee Wong walks the neighborhood these days, he cannot understand half the Chinese conversations he hears. Cantonese, a dialect from southern China that has dominated the Chinatowns of North America for decades, is being rapidly swept aside by Mandarin, the national language of China and the lingua franca of most of the latest Chinese immigrants." more ›

Shanghai's on a mission to silence Shanghainese before the World Expo comes to town. According to the South China Morning Post, Shanghai authorities are pushing forth their 12th annual Putonghua Promotional Week, a week-long Mandarin campaign that hopes to stop instances of people talking only in the Shanghainese dialect. Besides the Week, the government has also broadcast tv and radio adverts in recent months that portray Shanghainese as "uncivilized or backward." The Global Times outlines some of the reactions to official efforts to wipe out Shanghainese, pointing out that it's disappearing on its own anyway and that something precious will probably disappear along with it. "Once the dialect is lost," says Ma Lili, deputy chief director of the Hu Opera Theater of Shanghai, "the culture will surely follow." more ›

石室诗士施氏，嗜食狮，誓食十狮。适施氏时时适市视狮。十时，适十狮适市。是时，适施氏适市。氏视是十狮，恃矢势，使是十狮逝世。氏拾是十狮尸，适石室。石室湿，氏使侍拭石室。石室拭，氏始试食是十狮尸。食时，始识是十狮尸，实十石狮尸。试释是事。 more ›

First, we found Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao on Facebook. Then, there was the week-long China 2.0 Tour in November. And it looks like China's fascination with dominating the internet is showing no signs of slowing. Last week, the national campaign for the use of the new domain name, ".中国 (China)", finally took off in Beijing. more ›

Welcome to the latest edition of Chinese Soundbites, a podcast series brought to you by ChinesePod and Shanghaiist. Every week we bring you topics and words pulled straight from the headlines, in Mandarin Chinese. more ›

Welcome to the inaugural episode of Chinese Soundbites, a podcast series brought to you by ChinesePod and Shanghaiist. Every week we'll be bringing you topics and words pulled straight from the headlines, in Mandarin Chinese. more ›

Welcome to the latest episode of Chinese Soundbites, a podcast series brought to you by ChinesePod and Shanghaiist. Every week we'll be bringing you topics and words pulled straight from the headlines, in Mandarin Chinese. more ›

Welcome to the latest episode of Chinese Soundbites, a podcast series brought to you by ChinesePod and Shanghaiist. Every week we'll be bringing you topics and words pulled straight from the headlines, in Mandarin Chinese. more ›

Welcome to the latest episode of Chinese Soundbites, a podcast series brought to you by ChinesePod and Shanghaiist. Every week we'll be bringing you topics and words pulled straight from the headlines, in Mandarin Chinese. more ›

Welcome to the latest episode of Chinese Soundbites, a podcast series brought to you by ChinesePod and Shanghaiist. Every week we'll be bringing you topics and words pulled straight from the headlines, in Mandarin Chinese. more ›

Welcome to the newest episode of Chinese Soundbites, a podcast series brought to you by ChinesePod and Shanghaiist. Every week we'll be bringing you topics and words pulled straight from the headlines, in Mandarin Chinese. more ›

Welcome to the newest episode of Chinese Soundbites, a podcast series brought to you by ChinesePod and Shanghaiist. Every week we'll be bringing you topics and words pulled straight from the headlines, in Mandarin Chinese. more ›

Welcome to the inaugural episode of Chinese Soundbites, a podcast series brought to you by ChinesePod and Shanghaiist. Every week we'll be bringing you topics and words pulled straight from the headlines, in Mandarin Chinese. more ›

As any English speaker knows, reading translated menus can sometimes be more mind-boggling than struggling through the Chinese. With that in mind, the government has come up with a booklet of 2,000 translated titles for different dishes, which it is distributing to Beijing hotels in time for the Olympics. Sorry kids, no more "Chicken without sexual life." It's "Steamed pullet" now. [Source] more ›

Yes, we know there are a lot of websites out there for students of the Chinese language, but have you ever seen one as cute as this? more ›

Judging from our observations of our friends, we would say that if formal education fails, watching Taiwanese, Hong Kong, Korean, and Japanese TV shows, along with a healthy dose of Cantopop at the karaoke joint ought to get you started on traditional characters. Most PRC Chinese can read, if not write, traditional characters, but we suppose that's not the same as being formally educated in the subject. Anyhow, we think that, if it happens, it'd be a step in the right direction. Not as big a step as say democracy and free elections, but we're really into keeping our expectations low. more ›

people have chosen it as their mother tongue?" more ›