yǒuyuán qiān lǐ lái xiānghuì, wúyuán duìmiàn bù xiāngféng 有缘千里来相会，无缘对面不相逢 have connection thousand li come meet, no connection face-to-face don’t meet Fate brings people together 缘分 yuánfèn, or just 缘 yuán, is a term we use an awful...
Since we’re on the topics of shopping and money (videos here and here; audio list here) on the Mandarin Weekly series, I thought it’d be apt to introduce this proverb. Scroll down for the explanation and examples. So, what...
I was asked by someone from Beijing about the meaning of ‘几个字儿’ that Singaporeans so often use. To begin with, Singaporeans don’t say ‘几个字儿’. It should be ‘几个字jǐ gè zì*’. There’s no retroflex ending ‘儿’ since it...
I got the little musical cow on a trip to Japan when I was still in university. The beautiful pair of cats was a gift from a student when he was on holiday somewhere. I thought these...
