Community Discussions
Explore the latest discussions and community conversations related to this domain.
How has Chinese food stayed so cheap?
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At my local Chinese place, you can easily feed five people for +/- 20 bucks. When I was younger, you could grab a lunch special for 7 bucks with plenty of food for at least 2 people. Now their meals are like $9 tops.
Every where else I go, everything has spiked in price. Places where you could get a burger and fries for 8 dollars are now 15 and the fries are extra. Everything is like that now EXCEPT Chinese food. How?
Top Comment: Labor is one of the biggest costs of running a business like this. If it's a family owned business, everyone in the family contributes including teenage kids, so they are able to keep labor costs lower.
what is china’s equivalent to reddit / online forums?
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i’m trying to find chinese beauty forums (besides 小红书/抖音) that’s possibly formatted somewhat like reddit where i can read and discuss with op & commenters. i’m aware of 知乎 but i tried signing up years ago and failed, is that app the place i’m looking for? if it is i’ll try again
Top Comment: The most equivalent forum to Reddit is baidu tieba(百度贴吧)but it could get really toxic and it really lacks in female users. 知乎 is equivalent to Quora.
Is Chinese really useful as it claimed to be?
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Some people say it's the language of the future, the most spoken language on Earth and the language of a country which is an emerging powerhouse. And others say more native speakers mean more competition and even Chinese people use English in business. What is your opinion?
EDIT: Thanks a lot for the comments, I enjoy reading them.
Top Comment: I have been hearing that Chinese is the language of the future for at least 25 years. But I don't think it is. One reason is immigration. Very few people immigrate to China. The USA, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand are all places where people from all over the world immigrate to. Another reason is culture. In the past 25 years, very few Chinese language movies, series, books, or songs have been popular around the world. I mean, can the average non-Chinese speaker, without Googling, name 3 Chinese songs, 3 Chinese books, 3 Chinese TV shows, or 3 Chinese movies? Can the average person name even one Chinese song that was a big hit? One of my Chinese friends told me that Chinese culture is too "culture specific." I would argue that TV shows like "Friends" or "Downton Abbey" are also culture specific, yet they are watched the world over.
Foreigners who learned really good Chinese, how did it helped you in your professional life?
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Just was curious what do you do for living and if you currently live on China or a Chinese speaking country?
Top Comment: It made dealing with life much easier - chatting with neighbors, getting deliveries, repairmen at the house, veterinarians, rental agents, friends, etc. But it didn't help *that* much at work because I mainly use English and the vast majority of my colleagues speak much better English than I speak Chinese. I did interview at some Chinese companies and they made it clear that going home at 5pm was not allowed. So not a match.
How did you learn Chinese? : r/chinalife
Main Post: How did you learn Chinese? : r/chinalife
Steps to learn Mandarin?
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I'm interested in learning Mandarin but am completely unfamiliar with the language in every capacity. I've read conflicting suggestions all over the place and want a comprehensive answer regarding how to go about it. Should I learn to read and write, or speak and learn proper enunciation first? I'm looking to audit some courses on Coursera since they have everything structured in what I hope is an optimal way to learn. With regard to reading and writing there's simplified and traditional Chinese. What's the difference, and which do I need to focus on? What's Pinyin (the alphabet)? My understanding is that the characters signify meanings and do not make up words in the same manner English letters do so how do I bridge this kind of gap when learning? I also read somewhere that there are thousands of these characters so how do I learn everything? Won't the language still seem foreign when trying to read despite a few years worth of practice given the immense volume of complex looking characters? What I'm really asking is for a genuinely comprehensive and simple guide to follow to optimally learn Mandarin. Eventually I would like to be able to read, write, and speak with fluency, and I'd like to then segue into Japanese and Korean. I believe learning Mandarin will allow me to identify some root words in the other languages or so I've heard. Again, I'm fluent in English, but by no means am I a linguist or expert in any language so please break it down for me as if I'm a moron for simplicities sake. Also any free online resources would be greatly appreciated or textbooks worth picking up to practice reading and writing. Thanks in advance.
Top Comment: I'm only 350 hours into Mandarin (over 9 months). I figured out very quickly that learning the writing system robs time away from learning to understand and speak, which is extremely time consuming by itself. Thinking like a hedge fund, it is far more efficient to speak and understand only. If I move to China and writing becomes important, I'll recalibrate my goals. I started with a pure immersion pathway (watching TV shows and podcasts with subtitles), but I realized that watching Learner podcasts on YouTube helped fill in the blanks a lot more. Videos like "100 most common phrases in Mandarin" are excellent to listen to over and over again. If you're obsessed, it's not that difficult. It will come to you. Your brain is meant to absorb this language. You will discover your own learning style and lean into it.
Is there a chinese reddit?
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Is there any website similar to reddit in China? If there is more than 1, which one is the better and why?
Top Comment: I too would like to know the answer to this. There are several social media platforms that exist, but which would be closest to what we know as reddit?