Green in Chinese culture

In Chinese learning, color learning is an important part. In Chinese culture, colors have deeper meanings under the visible appearance. When we learnmandarin online, we should know the meaning of different colors. For example, you are not supposed to present a green hat as a gift to your Chinese friends. Why? Let’s learn colors in Chinese culture.

The color green is a very special color in Chinese learning. In English, green means new, young or freshman. In Chinese, there is a saying called “wear a green hat”. If  “他被带了绿帽子” or he is wearing a green hat, it means he was betrayed by his wife or girlfriend.

Why is this saying? It comes from a story.

The story says: Long time ago, the husband often went on business trip, leaving his wife at home. She was so lonely and empty that she dated her neighbor and unluckily they were caught being together when the husband returned. The husband forgave them, but they were still in contact. One day, they came up a plan: The wife will let the husband wear a green hat to fight cold, and when the husband went out, her lover would come and date her. Thus, wearing a green hat means someone is betrayed by his wife or girl friend.

Are you interested in this story? 

The color green has other meanings. In China, 绿色食品 or Green Food means food which causes no damage to the environment. Besides the color green, there are a lot of colors that have very different meanings from the ones in English. 

The Chinese is Coming

The Chinese is coming! I do not mean the Chinese people are coming, but the Chinese language is coming! If so, are you ready for the Chinese language learning?

Why are the Chinese studies becoming so popular? There are some reasons. First, Chinese has long history full of legends. Second, Chinese is spoken by the largest population in the world. Third, China has raised its international influence, furthermore the rapid economic development dramatically. Fourth, the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games has provided a good chance to show the Chinese culture to the world, and thus attracted more foreigners to study Chinese.

As a Chinese tutor, I'm very pride myself on the popularity of Chinese language. The fact that more and more foreigners study Chinese reflects China’s economic development in a sense. Take America as an example, from kindergartens to a high school, there is a rapid rise of interest among American pupils to study Chinese language. On the other hand, over two hundred Confucius institutes have been set up in 69 countries; from TV we can see many foreigners take Chinese learn online. The number of foreign students who are attracted by the mysterious and charming language and come to china learning Chinese also increases steadily every year.

While Chinese learn online is a fever among foreigners, many Chinese learners tend to ignore the importance of their mother tongue, grammatical mistakes constantly occur in their essays, not to mention coarse wording and improper style. That’s why we should attach equal importance to our mother tongue when we study Chinese.