Word: mandarins
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...local time. I stumble into the humidity of the rainy season, clutching a map and dragging my tiny suitcase through a crush of shoppers and booths hawking jade pendants and salted octopi. The streets swell with the alien tones of Cantonese, a dialect of Chinese pretty much indecipherable to Mandarin speakers...
...found at archaeological digs in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Chinese admiral Zheng He explored Africa's east coast between 1405-1433. Most compelling of all, until a few years ago, there lived, north of Cape Town, tribes with light colored skin, Mongolian features and a language tonally similar to Mandarin, who traced their origins to 13th century Chinese sailors and call themselves Awatwa or "abandoned people." Given the fact that not only the white population, but also the black African population migrated to what is now South Africa from further afield, Chinese South Africans feel as rooted here as anyone...
...speak Mandarin or Shanghainese?” my mom asked our tour guide when he greeted us at the airport...
...started when I took elementary Mandarin my first year at Harvard. Chinese is an extraordinary language. The sound “ma,” when said with one of four different tones, can mean mother, hemp, horse, or scold. “Mama ma ma” can mean “Mother scolded the horse.” The language relies on the intricacies of tone and the movements of the mouth, tongue, and throat rather than only the sounds...
SHANGHAI — As I prepared to travel to China for the first time, I thought that bracing myself for the culture shock was the best way to ease the transition into my ten week stint in Shanghai. Since my Mandarin language skills barely extend past ni hao, I came to Shanghai expecting only additional culture shock. But as I used my first lunch hour to explore Shanghai’s sleek Pudong area—a special economic region that the city transformed from farmland into a breathtaking skyline in only 20 years—I quickly discovered...