Chinese Wedding You Need to Know

Have you ever been invited to a Chinese wedding ceremony? What’s it like? Let me give you a brief introduction to Chinese wedding ceremony.

When would a ceremony be held? Chinese people are quite picky with the procedure of a wedding ceremony especially with the date of the ceremony. According to Chinese lunar calendar, some days are meant for holding happy ceremony like wedding, moving to a new house, etc. But some days are considered unlucky and some activities should not be performed. “So, when is a ‘lucky’ day?” you might ask. Well, I should say the tradition varies from place to place, but generally public holidays, special days are considered lucky by most people such as the National Day, New Year, May Day Holiday, etc. And as the western Christmas is approaching near, some people choose to hold their wedding on Christmas. Isn’t it a happy thing to receive both Christmas greetings in Chinese and wedding wishes from friends and families?

What is a Chinese wedding ceremony like? Coincidentally, I was quite busy attending friends’ weddings these days. And I have come up with 3 keywords that may help you better understand Chinese way of romance. First, happiness. Happiness comes from everyone’s smile. Chinese people especially care about the atmosphere of a happy event such as a wedding ceremony. So, on this day, they will not mention unhappy things and will give whatever the kids like in case they cry. Second, difficult. This word is to describe the process of the bridegroom getting into the bride’s room. In a traditional Chinese wedding, relatives and friends of bride’s side will “make trouble” to prevent the couple from meeting each other. And they won’t let go until they receive the红包 (hong2bao1), which is a red envelope with money in it. 红包 is also the third keyword we will mention today. In a Chinese wedding ceremony, you can see 红包 almost everywhere. The relatives of bridegroom have to give 红包 to the people inside the door to meet his wife-to-be; guests invited to a wedding need to give 红包 as gifts, and parents of both sides should give their daughter-in-law and son-in-law 红包 when they call their mother-in-law and father –in-law Mom and Dad.

What’s the wedding ceremony like in your country? As a saying goes “When in Rome, do as Romans do.” When you attend a Chinese wedding, be careful with the 3 keywords, especially the 红包！

Chinese Upside-down Blessing

Chinese New Year is the biggest and most important festival in China. Many people especially those who are learning Chinese online like it very much, not only because it’s the end of the year and the beginning of a new one, but because of its various traditional customs. 

Of its many special traditions, pasting red paper signs with the word “blessing” on walls and doors can be very interesting.  The Chinese character for “blessing” is “福”, which Chinese people like very much. The character is a prayer for a happy life and a better future. The interesting thing or the seemingly weird thing about the tradition is that Chinese people pasted the papers sighs upside down. This has confused many foreigners who don’t know much about this traditional Chinese custom. Did the Chinese people did this by mistake? If not, why are these paper signs pasted upside-down?

Emperor of the Ming dynasty commanded his soldiers to kill selected families. The doors of the selected families would be marked by a blessing sign. The kind-hearted Empress Ma heard this and wanted to prevent it. She secretly commanded the whole city to paste the blessing sign on their doors, so the soldiers would have no idea which families they were supposed to kill. But one family pasted a “blessing” sign upside-down as they had been in a hurry.

Since the emperor couldn’t decide which one to select, she simply picked the family who pasted the blessing upside down. When the emperor was about to kill the family, Ma quickly intervened and said the upside down blessing has a special meaning.

The Chinese character 倒 which means “upside down” or “reverse” has exactly the same pronunciation as the character 到 which means “to arrive.” She argued that this family knew the soldiers would be arriving that day and by pasting the sign upside-down, they meant that the arrival of the soldiers would be a blessing. She asked how the emperor could possibly want to kill this patriotic and kind family. The emperor heard this explanation and quit his idea of killing the family. Time passed by, and “pasting the “福” upside down” was carried on from generation to generation as traditional custom on Chinese New Year.

HSK grammar

Chinese cultural embarrassment

With China’s increasing influence, the intercultural communication between Chinese and foreigners has become more and more frequent. And a lot of people has started learning Chinese. It seems the online Chinese is going rather hot outside China, but what is going on domestically?

In China, people, especially the youth group, tend to neglect the importance of Chinese tuition and its rich culture. They usually pay more attention to foreign language acquisition than mandarin. That’s why a lot of young people are not standard in mandarin speaking. Some can only speak local dialect.

Various factors can account for this situation. For example, a good command of a foreign language may help young people in China get a good job while Chinese skills may be of no significance in one’s job hunting and even their career. As a result, some students may not value Chinese language as English.

Besides, nowadays fewer and fewer universities stimulate Chinese language study in campus, which has caused it to be marginalized. Under this circumstance, Chinese language becomes less and less popular in universities. So, the Chinese should also speed up their steps to learn Chinese language and Chinese culture as foreign Chinese learners do.

If you are condidering learning Chinese too, you can start by taking online Chinese lessons, or access free online learning resources. 

hskcourse.com is an online platform for HSK exercises, that has structured hsk grammar lessons. This site aim to help you not only successfully pass the exam, but gain confidence in using Chinese language.

Learn Chinese characters-to Add Fuel

With the increasing influence of China, Chinese language learning is becoming popular and Chinese characters or phrases can be seen on more and more occasion such as “中国制造” on products, or people chanting “加油” in Olympic Games. So, what do these words mean? And how do we pronounce them? No hurry! From today on, we will introduce the series of ”learn Chinese characters”, good news for those who want to learn pinyin or Chinese characters.

In this article, we will particularly focus on the word"加油 (jiāyóu)". Jia4 means to add in Chinese, while You2 means gas or fuel, so literally, "加油 (jiāyóu)" means "to add fuel". Why do Chinese say “add fuel” to encourage their players? It may confuse many foreigners who is trying to learn mandarin.

What is the relationship between petrol stations and athletes? When a car is running slower, probably the gas is running out. The example is just like an athlete running out of energy. It means something like "Come on!" or "Go! Go! Go!" and can be heard during any sporting event or game in China. Isn’t it interesting?

Now do you get the meaning of 加油 (jiāyóu)? You can stay tune to our “learn Chinese characters” series, which will introduce more popular Chinese characters in the future. You can also seek Chinese tuition at iChineselearning school, one of the best online mandarin schools in China.

Being old may not be a bad thing in China

To learn Chinese well, one should be as careful as possible, because the same word can have various meanings in different situations. Obviously, it is the context that decides the meaning of a particular word. So when you go through Chinese learning, do pay extreme attention to the context and only in this way can you figure out the correct meaning of the text.

While learning Chinese language, people are sometimes confused by the usage of老 (lǎo), which literally means “old” in English, but in fact it has other meanings besides “old” such as always, respected (senior), outdated and tough.

In Chinese learning, 老 (lǎo) is translated into "senior" particularly when depicting aged people as a way to show respect. The Chinese call someone “old” to show respect. Chinese people tend to add 老(lǎo) after an aged person’s family name to address him or her respectfully, for example, Ji Xianlin, was called by many as 季老(jìlǎo). However, this kind of usage should only happen in daily Chinese conversations.

In another example, the phrase “老爸”, “老” has an exceptional meaning, which is to show the close affiliation to the father in a common and vulgar way. So “老爸” approximately means “daddy”, instead of meaning old daddy.

It’s been proven that finding Chinese tuition is one of the most effective ways to really learn Chinese well, because the Chinese learners not only can take in lots of Chinese knowledge, but have great chances to practice speaking during the Chinese tuition.

Taking part in Contest to learn Chinese

Learning mandarin is no doubt the first choice when people consider picking up a language to learn. The reason is various. There are many ways to learn mandarin: some tend to seek Chinese tuition while others take part in Chinese contest. Many students who are learning mandarin take part in such contest as Chinese speaking contest, Chinese debating contest, etc. That’s why a lot of Chinese language completions were held in many countries, such as Singapore, America, and Australia.

Those who learn mandarin Singapore may be excited these days. In the afternoon of 17 senior group of final, 8 contestants have not satisfied through the speech show Chinese, have the talent show, not only the authentic Chinese name, the talent show is tunnel: blow to pull her, Chinese kung fu, tongue twisters, rap, Chinese "the mouth kung fu" native to China than young people was opened.

Get the "Chinese bridge" senior group of champions Si MaXian also say, Chinese in Singapore was "fire", he has been learning Chinese for less than 1 years, but learning mandarin helped him understand Chinese culture, so more study is fast." He said, learning Chinese, let him know that his past to know China better "superficial", now more and more like Chinese, also more and more like Chinese culture.

Chinese consulate general education counselor Cen Jianjun attended the game, he cannot help but praised the players "high level", he also encouraged beginners to learn pinyin and to take part in Chinese language contest like this one "one country language learning is the best way to learn about the country that China and Singapore Cultural exchange between the countries will continue to put forward the friendship between the two countries.

Are you also one of those who learn mandarin Singapore? Why not join us in the contest and show your Chinese off?