Learning Chinese is a lot about memorization and repetition. This actually seems to be a central component of Chinese culture. In the past, scholars would memorize the Confucian classics, actually memorize entire books. Students of calligraphy would write characters thousands of times, and the repetition is not just limited to language learning. In Chinese martial arts, students practice patterns of movements thousands of times, until movements seamlessly flow into each…

The blog site Learn Chinese Weekly by Lydia Lin has this week ( and last week ) posted very interesting articles on Chinese idioms that follow the AABB pattern…

I'm really new to learning Chinese. But I firmly believe that immersing yourself in the language helps a lot! So, before going to bed every night, I watch some Chinese TV shows (I tend to pick some game shows, because the things they talk about are quite day-to-day stuff). I have been hearing a lot of dà jiā hǎo (大家好) . I realised it was a greeting, but didn't exactly know what it was .. I just knew 你好 (nǐ hǎo) and 你们好 (nǐ men hǎo). Anyway, I didn't pay much attention to the greeting either.…