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Survival Chinese. Chilin Shih East Asian Languages and Cultures University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Chinese Geography Chinese Language Chinese Banquet Etiquette. Chinese Geography. Chinese Geography. China has 1.3 billion people. 5000 years of history
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Survival Chinese Chilin Shih East Asian Languages and Cultures University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Chinese Geography Chinese Language Chinese Banquet Etiquette
Chinese Geography China has 1.3 billion people. 5000 years of history 9.6 million square km of area
Chinese Geography Modern Chinese population concentrates in the east. The Yellow River valley was the cradle of Chinese civilization. The Yangtze River is the longest river in Asia. The river basin is home to one-third of Chinese population.
Chinese Language and Dialects Mandarin is the official standard language of China. Though China is well-known for language diversity. There are many dialects such as Cantonese and Shanghainese.
Chinese Writing System The Chinese writing system consists of more than 40,000 characters A typical college students know about 3000-5000 characters
Chinese Writing System Some characters retain the ancient pictographic design. Some are created with whimsical combination.
sun moon car horse
ri4 yue4 ming2 sun moon bright
mu4 lin2 sen1 tree woods forest
Chinese Writing System Most of the Chinese characters are actually sound-based, with a component indicating the sound and another the meaning category.
ma question marker ma4 ma1 ma3 mother scold horse ma3 ma3 ant weight agate ma3
Chinese Writing System In a traditional Chinese book, the characters are written vertically and are read from right to left.
Chinese Writing System In modern books Chinese characters can be aligned horizontally and are read from left to right. This layout is commonly used for scientific articles where English words are often included.
Chinese Tones Chinese is a tone language. Different tones, or pitch contours, change the meaning of the word. Ma1: mother Ma2: hemp Ma3: horse Ma4: to scold
Chinese Tones Ma1-ma0 ma4 ma3. Mother scolds the horse. Ma3 ma4 ma1-ma0. The horse scolds mother.
Pinyin – A Romanization System Pinyin is a Romanization system—a spelling aid using Latin alphabet to annotate the pronunciation of Chinese characters
Pinyin – Vowels a, e, i, o, u, ü Pinyin uses these letters for 16 vowel sounds. The pronunciation changes with context, though generally, say them as if you are singing Italian songs.
Pinyin examples bi, ba, bu di, da, du ga, gu bei, bai ban, bang puo, pong pi, pa, pu ti, ta, tu ka, ku sa, su pin, ping ma, na, la
Pinyin examples q = ch x = sh (say them with a smile!) j = gee zh = jr with the tongue curled qing wen May I ask, please xie xie Thank you Beijing Beijing Zhong guo China
Banquets serve important social functions in China. Friendship is strengthened and political and business decisions were typically made during banquets.
Seating Arrangement The seat facing the door is the honored seat for the guest of honor. The host sits opposite to the guest of honor.
Guest Host
In a formal banquet, dishes are served sequentially. There may be ten to twelve courses, starting with appetizers and ending with a soup.
The host will make a toast and welcome everyone. Gan bei! This means bottom up. Then the host will invite everyone to start.
The honored guest is served first. This custom is enthusiastically followed for the first few courses.
The honored guest usually makes a toast to the host when the second dish is served. After that, every one can initiate a toast to individual or to the whole group. There may be many rounds of toast during the course of the meal.
When touching glasses, raise your glass to a height that reflects the social ranking. When toasting to your boss or senior, keep the rim of your glass a bit lower.
The host is responsible for ordering. It is an art to find the perfect combination and sequence to bring out the optimal culinary experience.