Travel Tips

Languages

Chinese is the official language in China, known as Mandarin, Putonghua in mainland China. It is also named as 'Guoyu' in Taiwan and 'Huayu' in Malaysia and Singapore. As a principle language of Sino-Tibetan family, it is developed from Beijing dialect. The written Chinese are identical while the spoken Chinese has many varieties. The varieties are so different from each other that one variety may be totally mutually unintelligible. Chinese is the language of the Han People, the Hui and the Manchu, and 53 other ethnic groups in China also have their own languages.

English is also a popular language in China. English is a compulsory course in primary school, mid-school and universities. So English is not strange for the educated Chinese people in China, though they don't speak it in their daily life. In case that you are finding a way or a place, the passers-by looking like a student may help. Nevertheless, a Chinese may be not good at speaking English, even though he does well in writing.

Japanese, Korean, French German, Russian and Spanish are only familiar to a limited number of language learners. They may learn it as a second language in universities or get trained in some private short training classes. So if you speak only one of these languages and want to travel in China, you really need a guide acting as interpreter.