208 CultureShock! China
Excellent background readings on Chinese poetry,
linguistics, etc. plus one of the best guides we’ve seen to
Romanisation: http://www.pinyin.info
Daily podcasts in Chinese: http://www.chinesepod.com
For introductions to Chinese characters, on-line dictionaries,
Pinyin chat and more: http://www.zhongwen.com
For in-depth, hard-core character etymologies: http://www.
internationalscientific.org/
Useful links: http://www.uni.edu/becker/chinese2.html
Our best advice is to not bother with written Chinese
beyond ‘survival characters’ (as below) unless you plan to
make it a subject of years of study. But we strongly urge
anyone who will spend any length of time in China to try to
learn to speak Chinese. The above will get you started.Written Chinese
The Basics
Most businesspeople will learn only a few Chinese characters.
The written language is simply too complex and difficult to
learn much of as a part-time or occasional endeavour, even
in its simplified modern form. Classical Chinese, originally
written without punctuation, is even more difficult. Most
expats learn just a few ‘survival characters’. These will likely
include and ୶ (‘male’ and ‘female’, needed to distinguish
between restroom doors), the characters on the street signs
or a few other landmarks near the expat’s apartment, and
perhaps the names of a few basic foods, as follows:
୫ೄ(niurou): beef
ࠠ (ji): chicken
ೄ (rou): meat in general, but by itself it usually means pork.
ڱ(doufu): tofu
ҙ (cai): vegetables, but it can also mean a dish of food.
ු (su): vegetarian
๏ (miantiao): noodles
ૣ (mi): rice
That said, it is worth the while of businesspeople to
understand a little about how written Chinese works, if only
to better appreciate the pride Chinese people take in their
language. The following sections offer an overview.