You will find south in a number of province names including Henan; Hunan; Yunnan and in the city of Nanjing (southern capital).
Division of a traditional Feng Shui compass
9. 晚上wǎn shàng refers to which time of day?
Lunchtime
Morning
Evening
Wanshang refers to evening and can be transliterated as late up.
10. 小 Xiǎo means what in English?
big
child
small or young
Division marks around a small object indicating smallness.
11. How would you say four tickets in Chinese?
四票sì piào
四张票sì zhāng piào
四朝sì zhāo
You need to include a measure word in Chinese; you can not say just four tickets, you need to add the measure word for things that are flat 四票sì piào between the number and the noun.
12. The United States of America is called what in Chinese?
华国huá guó
美国měi guó
没国méi guó
美měi means beautiful on its own, so with 国guó it means beautiful country. It was chosen as a rough transliteration of America.
Deng Xiaoping during Sino-American signing ceremony, 1st Jan 1979.
Image available under a Creative Commons license ➚.
13. To make a sentence to indicate an action is complete as in 'gone'; 'left'; 'bought' what can you do?
Add 没méi before the verb
Add 了le after the verb
Add 么me after the the verb
Changing the tense of a verb is easy in Chinese you do not have to learn declension or lots of new characters. Adding 了le to 买mǎi buy turns it into 买了mǎi le bought.
14. How would you say the year 2008 in Chinese?
二零零八年 èr líng líng bā nián
两零零八年 liǎng líng líng bā nián
二千八年 èr qiān bā nián
The 'zero' is repeated. It can also be specified, but more rarely, as 两千零八 liǎng qiān líng bā.
16. Which character for good fortune is widely seen at Chinese New Year?
木mù
夫fū
福fú
The character for good fortune 福fú has an interesting derivation. It is widely seen on Chinese gifts. Just to add to confusion it is often shown ‘upside down’
Traditional lion dance near a temple
17. How do you express 1,000,000 in Chinese?
百万 bǎi wàn
千千 qiān qiān
十万 shí wàn
In China, the number 10,000 was considered innumerable and is used to express 'countless' and 'myriad'. Numbers greater than 10,000 are expressed as multiples of 10,000 up to 100,000,000 which would be 10,000x10,000 and is a new character 亿 yì.
Starter level quiz about the Chinese language.
