Hire Chinese Voice Talent

New Year means a new animal
Each New Year is linked to an animal and there are twelve animals in total. There is a twelve-year cycle. Your horoscope is based on the animal related to that year. Some of the animals include the Dragon, the monkey, the rabbit, and the snake. The Chinese horoscope is called Shengxiao in Mandarin Chinese.

Mandarin Chinese is spoken in Northern China
You’ll hear Mandarin Chinese if you go to the northern provinces including Beijing, Sichuan, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Baoji. Beijing is one of China’s oldest cities. It used to be called Peking and it is the capital of China.

The Chinese are superstitious people
The Chinese have a lot of superstitions. Unlike here in the west, they relate the colour white and not black to death and bad luck. They don’t like green much either as that could mean your husband or wife has been unfaithful. The number 6 is a lucky number in Chinese. It means prosperity and happiness.

Take the Metro in Shanghai
The metro in Shanghai is the longest in the world. There are 459 stations and 479 miles of track, and it’s still being expanded. For comparison the London Underground has just 272 stations.

Kentucky Fried Chicken is popular in China
Kentucky Fried Chicken have restaurants in China, but when they first opened, they made a terrible error translating their slogan ‘Finger lickin’ good’ – the powers that be thought it could be translated word for word (sometimes this can’t be done) and it came out as “we’ll eat your fingers off” which didn’t go down too well with Kentucky’s Chinese customers.

Bring a gift if you’re invited to dinner
Chinese etiquette says that it is polite to bring your host and hostess a small gift if you are invited to their home to eat. Flowers or fruit are good choices and remember that 8 is a lucky number for them.

Tibetans in Sichuan
If you want to see how Tibetans live while you are in China, then visit the northwest mountain area of Sichuan. In the border town of Kanding you can see the ancient market town on the Old Tea Horse Road to see traditional Tibetan people.

Tourists like Beijing
The most popular tourist destination in China is Beijing. In Beijing you can visit the Great Wall of China which is thousands of miles long and took more than 2,000 years to construct. While in Beijing you can also visit the Forbidden City which is a former imperial palace of the Emperor of China from the Ming dynasty. It is called the forbidden city because only authorised people were allowed to visit.

Chinese New Year has another name
The Chinese New Year falls on a different day each year, not like the West who celebrate New Year on the 1st of January. Chinese New Year is also called the Spring Festival. The new year is normally in January or February

The Chinese love to travel
The Chinese love to visit other countries and the most popular places they visit include Japan, Thailand, the USA, Australia, and Great Britain. People in China weren’t allowed to visit other countries until the 1990s so they’ve got a lot of time to make up.

A short history on the Chinese Mandarin language

Mandarin Chinese is spoken throughout China north of the Yangtze river. It is the native language of two thirds of the total Chinese population. It is taught in schools both in northern China and on islands like Hong Kong, where their mother tongue is actually Cantonese.

The language is divided up into four groups and depend on which areas people come from as to what type of Mandarin they speak. For example, in Beijing, they speak northern Mandarin, whilst in Sichuan they speak southwestern Mandarin. The people of China refer to the Mandarin language as Putonghua, in Taiwan they call it Guayu and in the Philippines they say Huayu.

Mandarin is a tonal language, which means that it is important to get the intonation of word right, in order for the meaning to be conveyed correctly.

Mandarin is the official language of the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan and is also included in one of the four official languages of Singapore, along with English, Malay and Tamil.

The English word for tea, which people sometimes call cha, comes from the Chinese Chá meaning tea. One of the most famous Chinese teachers is Confucius, who wrote many philosophical quotes which are still used today.