Festival Series- Mid-Autumn Festival

We will get to know more Chinese festivals. Mid-Autumn Festival, that will be the topic of today’s online Chinese lessons. This festival falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, usually in October in Chinese lunar calendar.

So, how does this festival come into being?

It all begins from a story: there were said to be ten suns in the sky, which scorched all crops and drove people into dire poverty. A hero named Hou Yi ascended to the top of the Kunlun Mountain and, directing his superhuman strength to full extent, drew his extraordinary bow and shot down the nine superfluous suns one after another. He also ordered the last sun to rise and set according to time. For this reason, he was respected and loved by the people and lots of people of ideals and integrity came to him to learn martial arts from him. A person named Peng Meng lurked in them.

One day when Hou Yi led his disciples to go hunting, Peng Meng, sword in hand, rushed into the inner chamber and forced Chang E to hand over the elixir. Aware that she was unable to defeat Peng Meng, Chang E made a prompt decision at that critical moment. She turned round to open her treasure box, took up the elixir and swallowed it in one gulp. As soon as she swallowed the elixir her body floated off the ground, dashed out of the window and flew towards the moon.

Learn Chinese characters series-Can’t be hurt anymore

We will continue with our series of “learn Chinese characters”. In recent years, the appearance of Chinese popular words not only enriches our internet life but makes the Chinese language more touching and interesting. Most of these trendy words come from the Internet, because most of the netizens are youngsters. Those who are learning mandarin online should also notice what new is popular concerning Chinese learning.

Today, we will talk about "伤不起 (shāngbùqǐ)" which is a new popular expression in China. It means someone has already been hurt so badly that he or she cannot take any more. At first, "伤不起 (shāngbùqǐ)" was only popular in schools and on the internet, but now "伤不起 (shāngbùqǐ)" is widely used in daily life. Some television programs are using this phrase to create dramas. It has even been used as a song titled by popular singers. It’s a pretty musical song and you can take a listen. Using the normal sentence order, the sentence should be "你伤不起… (nǐ shāngbùqǐ…)", but it is now much more common to say "…你伤不起 (…nǐ shāngbùqǐ).”We put the object in the front of the sentence to emphasis our feelings. So students are exposed to many online Chinese words in their life.

They make new words or give new meaning to old words. It’s them who make the internet lively and interesting. If you are bated by many mosquito，they will say that is “new mosquito gave you continuous kisses”. All of these imply their desire for creating. In learning Chinese characters, we should continually stick to what’s new about Chinese language.

With the continuous development of society，lots of new words are created on the internet. These interesting and touching ideas deeply enrich our vocabulary and at the same time. Make your Chinese more fashionable by learning mandarin online!

A good way to master Chinese characters

For those who are learning online Chinese, they can get a lot of speaking and listening practice, which is a big advantage learning mandarin online, but they also need to do a lot of practice of writing the Chinese characters.

According to statistics by Chinese Education Bureau, a growing number of people across the world are making efforts in learning Chinese characters. Why? Because you can see Chinese characters everywhere! Sometimes, it may cause big trouble if one cannot recognize the seemingly weird Chinese characters.

To learn Chinese characters is not as difficult as most Chinese learners say. The Chinese characters do not consist of many weird irregular strokes which trouble many Chinese learners. Actually, each Chinese character can be divided into several parts, called radicals and each character has its own meaning. For example, 喝(drink) is a common Chinese character, the first time you see it, you may think it is too complicated and there is no regular patterns to follow, thus having difficulty in learning Chinese characters. However, the upper part of it was a日, which is the sun. And the lower part of it is a “人” who stands under the eave, being surrounded by something so that he can get water and drink it. Under the burning sun, people naturally get thirsty and drinking is done by mouth, thus 喝(drink)’s components include both "口" and "日", and the remaining part is a vivid picture of people drinking water. So, learning the meaning of each character is a must because it helps better understand and remember the character.

Learning mandarin online requires associative memory. Chinese characters are fairly similar to the image of the objects they represent. If the Chinese learners are able to create link between the characters and the objects, it will be much easier to learn Chinese online.