Asian Society & History

“He was only trying to help” – Face Issues in China

Note: This article is a rant. And I wrote it in 2012. It was published in another website which, recently, went offline forever. Since the thoughts I shared are still (very) relevant to China and its society, we decided to publish it on SDC. Today I did something I’m not proud of. Fast backward to …

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Interesting Facts about Chinese Names and Surnames

Interesting Facts about Chinese Names and Surnames

This article was writter by TutorMandarin, an online Chinese tutoring service that helps students how to speak Mandarin using an their Android mobile app and PC Software. P.S. Click here to jump directly to an interesting infographic that showcases the most common Chinese surnames for each Province. Naming is an absolutely integral part of Chinese …

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I Ching: The Art of Infallible Divination

Introduction The book I Ching, also called “Zhouyi” or “the book of changes” is irrefutably and unanimously considered as one of the deepest and determining roots of the Chinese culture. The origins of the concepts that it contains are lost in the depths of time to the point of founding itself with mythological figures who, …

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The importance of “programming” in Chinese culture: the scholastic path of Chinese children

The importance of “programming” in Chinese culture: the scholastic path of Chinese children

Today we’ll talk about “Programming”. I don’t mean what they do in companies like Google or Microsoft, but of what is done to reach a certain objective, to seek a better future or simply to simplify (perhaps) their lives. Programming past and future The title of this article is simple: “The importance of programming in …

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Why is English so hard for Chinese people?

As we’ve discussed in a previous article (Why Native English is Worth its Weight in Gold in China), learning English is something of a priority for the Chinese. But, despite all the time, money, and effort, China just can’t seem to produce very many competent ESL speakers. The flip side is no different; Chinese is …

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Chinese culinary culture

Chinese culinary culture

Chinese culinary culture (饮食文化, yinshi wenhua) is an indispensable aspect of Chinese life. As Confucius said: “food is the very first necessity of man”. Not to mention that, in China, it’s around the lunch table that business takes place. Food and the language 吃了饭没有?(chi le fan mei you?), “Have you eaten?”, has always been one …

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The New Foreigner-Grading System in China

To say that China is a *bit* homogenous is something of an understatement. If you’ve never been here, allow me to briefly bore you with some statistics: There are nearly 1.4 billion people living in the People’s Republic of China. Of those, well over a billion (roughly 93%) are Han Chinese, and the vast majority …

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Jing-Jin-Ji: Birth of a megalopolis with Chinese characteristics

A project to revitalize the economy in the north of China China’s impressive economic growth in the past 30 years has been amply guided by the development of two enormous urban conglomerates: the Blue River Delta (DFA) around Shanghai and Nanjing in central China, and the Pearl River Delta (DFP) around Canton and Shenzhen in …

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Chinese etiquette

Chinese etiquette – The complete guide

Boasting a continuous history of thousands of years, China has collected an extensive catalogue of rules – explicit and implicit – that govern social habits: the so-called Chinese etiquette (o 礼节). In the past, almost every aspect of Chinese life was regulated by what Master Confucius called 礼 (“li”, rites); failure to observe one of …

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Study Chinese Beijing

Stories of the Poor – Zhang Xi and The Rat Tribe of Beijing

Zhang Xi, a young man from Hohhot, capital of Inner Mongolia, came to Beijing three years ago and since then has always lived inside a basement room on the periphery of the city. Young Xi, a theater and arts graduate, is forced to work as a traveling salesman and only rarely finds work in some …

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Restaurant etiquette in China

Restaurant etiquette in China

“Sik zo faan mei aa?” (“have you already eaten today?”, 食咗飯未呀) is a common greeting, comparable to our “hey, how’s it going?”, in Hong Kong as in all of China (in Mandarin they say “chi fan le ma?, 吃饭了吗”, the version above is in Cantonese). Therefore it’s no surprise to learn, even in little everyday …

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Online payments in China

Online payments in China: Spreading without limits

Apps and e-commerce platforms directly connected to your bank account Online commerce in China is rapidly growing because consumers are more inclined to make purchases online through various platforms and devices like computers, tablets and smartphones. Online payment operations in China have surpassed 2.42 billions of Chinese Yuan (about 370 millions of American Dollars) in …

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Mouo Tribe

Mosuo, the last (almost) matriarchal tribe

I heard about the Mosuo bits and pieces at a time talking to anthropologists and backpackers. They are a Chinese ethnic minority living around Lugu Lake, on the border between Yunnan and Sichuan province. I had the idea that they were a matriarchal tribe and I believed men among them were reduced to sex objects. …

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Dog meat in China and the Yulin festival

Disclaimer: This article is an opinion article based on contrasting information and personal experience. The comments section is open to discussion. However, just like with any article on SDC, any comments considered to be clearly offensive or insulting will be deleted. Lately, we received a wave of insulting comments against Chinese people, and strangely on …

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