It’s said that Beijing makes expats more Chinese, but that Shanghai makes Chinese people more international. And yeah, Shanghai is a very international city, and some youngsters may speak Chinese — especially baristas. So yes, you get away with ordering your coffee in English and pointing at pictures on menus in restaurants. But here’s why […]
Let us dispel some reasons not to learn Mandarin Chinese language. 1 — Don’t need to learn new stuff Perfectly valid reason! If someone’s life’s good enough, why bother! But, for many Mandarin learners, Mandarin has been incredibly meaningful; not just in that it opens many doors, but also in that it shows them that […]
Our Chinese learning students and their stories about learning Mandarin are what makes teaching this language worthy of lifelong careers — and among those stories is that of Sasha, Jo, Phil and Brieuc. Together with teacher Stella, they’ve been learning Chinese online with GoEast for 7 months, sharing vocab and private details. Last week, after […]
Clashes of culture give rise to great stories, as well as conflict. The documentary American Factory (美国工厂) tells such a story, a dreary yet hopeful one — all around the metaphor of manufacturing glass. See our other Chinese series on Netflix As a Mandarin student, you’ve probably experienced lots of culture clashes in China, both […]
Every day seems to be a day for something. There’s a Pancake day (February 25), a day for Lefthanders (August 13), or leaving the office early (June 2). And today is the best of them: it’s United Nation’s Chinese Language Day (联合国中文日Liánhéguó zhōngwén rì). Why Chinese Language Day? It’s set up in 2010 by UNESCO, […]
Answer these questions to find out which Chinese city and you are most alike. We’ll rank your latitude based on the answers: simply keep track of your amount of A’s and B’s. Maybe it’ll help you decide your new hometown, place to study Mandarin, or travel destination (we hope it’s Shanghai)! When you say “where”, […]
Has living in China or learning Mandarin in Shanghai or online made you become more Chinese? See these ten questions, and see if you can score a full ten! – Number 1 – You call “Powerpoint” “pīpītī”. Bonus point if you also call apps as ‘ēipīpī’. – Number 2 – You prefer hot water over […]
This article is about the best books for learning the Chinese language. Because no matter how fancy apps or YouTube channels are, books are amazing learning materials. Click here if you want to find more about: Specialized Graded Readers for Chinese language learning Books about Chinese culture Mandarin Chinese children’s books Best books for learning […]
It takes around five minutes to cycle from GoEast’s campus in Shanghai to LeWagon — but while one school teaches Mandarin and the other teaches code, are they really that close in class material too? Is learning a foreign language similar to learning a coding language? Would a Chinese-speaker code differently than an English-speaker? We […]
We love quotes because they’re nuggets of wisdom, condensed life-lessons into bite-sized sentences. A good quote is memorable and inspirational. So we’ve lined a few up for you, you amazing Chinese-learner. Jiāyóu! Language tethers us to the world; without it we spin like atoms. – Penelope Lively Learning another language is not only learning different […]