For obvious reasons of topicality, recent months have seen a number of new books on China. They include journalist Ananth Krishnan’s perceptive on-the-ground account of China’s recent ...

Linguistically, China wants ... A host of special characters represent unique syllables of Cantonese, enabling books and magazines to be printed in Cantonese rather than Mandarin, and fuelling ...

Every night I spent time on a new character to work out how it is composed." Chineasy, which is aimed at all ages, teaches traditional Mandarin Chinese ... (In the book, pronunciation advice ...

For years Cantonese speakers in southern China have complained that local culture is being eroded under orders from Beijing, where Mandarin dominates. The recent protests highlight a traditional ...

Consisting of 37 characters and four tone marks, it transcribes all the sounds you can read in Mandarin. Although it was phased out in mainland China in the 1950s, this system is still widely used ...

JAKARTA — Around 20 years ago, Lu Fang landed in Indonesia from China to begin her career as a Mandarin ... but persistent practice has improved her skills. "Learning Chinese characters was ...

Only 40% of people in some rural parts of China speak the national dialect China has said that it wants 80% of its citizens to speak Mandarin, the country's dominant dialect, by 2020. The current ...