Here are some other fantastic shots and blog post with photos of the performances.

Where is it?

The show is held nightly at the at the Jinjiang Theatre (锦江剧场) located just north of the popular ChunxiLu shopping district.

How to get tickets?

I was just at the main Sichuan office of the China Travel Service where I was quoted ticket prices of 220 RMB for seats behind the fifth row. As far as I know, the best way to see Fu Rong Guo Cui is to hire a private taxi driver to get the tickets for you and to throw in a free ride to the show and back home again afterwards. So far, I’ve tried two private drivers. The first one sold me 90 kuai tickets up in the balcony. I was persuaded to pay 150 RMB for seats in the downstairs main seating area, but he ended up only being able to get 100 kuai seats again up in the balcony. The very best deal I’ve gotten was from Yang Bing who got me front row seats for just 90 RMB! Yang Bing picked us up at 7pm in his van which seats six passengers, excluding himself. He drove slowly and safely to the theater where we arrived early enough so that we could sit down to a cup of tea in the theater’s adjoining tea house. Yang Bing told me that normally people have to pay for the tea, but since he has brought so many guests over the years to see the show, his guests get free tea. And it was good tea! If you’d like to use Yang Bing to see the show, his number is 1-365-805-8464. He doesn’t speak much English so you’ll need to communicate with him in Chinese.

Today I decided it was time to finally buy a printer so that I could keep our personal information safe from any possible prying eyes. The last time I bought a piece of electronic equipment, an external LED monitor, I went to a nearby computer products mall. It’s chock full of little vendors all clamoring loudly for your attention as you walk by their stores. It feels like an aggressive flea market but in a five story, air-conditioned building with escalators. Shopping at the mall was stressful for me because I couldn’t tell whether I was being quoted fair prices for the monitors I inquired about. Being an overseas Chinese guy, the vendors don’t immediately recognize that I’m a foreigner, but as soon as I start talking in Chinese they soon realize that I can’t quite understand their responses. So I’m always wary that they will be quoting me the “foreigners” price rather than the normal price.

Recently I’ve been learning how to buy stuff from TaoBao.com, China’s version of eBay. Being that TaoBao is a nationwide market, I feel confident that prices quoted there are the genuine prices. So this time, wanting to buy a printer, I decided to look for a printer on TaoBao. It wasn’t hard to filter the search results to just show me inkjet printers sold by vendors in Chengdu city. The Canon MP259 printer sold by a vendor only about a mile away from where I live caught my eye. I did a quick search on Amazon for a few models I found on TaoBao. But Amazon didn’t carry any of the Canon or HP printers I searched for. It seems that I was searching specifically for printer models specifically sold in China. I was, however, able to find many positive reviews about the printer on NewEgg’s China website. The U.S. version of the printer, the MP250, has great reviews also here and here. I chatted online with the TaoBao vendor to see if they had the MP259 in stock and to confirm the 370 RMB price listed on the TaoBao product page. And before long I hopped on my bike and pedaled down to the store.

It wasn’t hard to find the right brick-n-mortar printer store that was selling the MP259 on TaoBao.  And there were many other stores specialized in selling printers and computer products in that area. To double-check whether 370 RMB was a good price, I first walked into a neighboring store and found that they were selling the MP259 for 450 RMB. Then I went to the store I intended to buy from. They had a stack of MP259s right by the entrance. The clerk told me that he couldn’t sell me the printer for 370 RMB, as that was the online-only price. He said that the lowest he could sell it for was 380 RMB. That was fine by me. Not a bad purchase for just 58 USD. Walmart sells the U.S. version for only 32 bucks so its not a steal. But I don’t feel ripped of either. Electronics are always cheaper to buy in the U.S. than in China.

I felt like a local biking home with my brand new printer bungee corded to my bicycle. Thanks to the helpful store clerk, who helped me strap it on, the printer made it home safely during crazy Chengdu rush hour traffic.

Printer Setup

In case you’re in China and are thinking to buy this same printer, here are some pics of its setup.

They sold me a brand new printer in a box that had never been opened. Often in China, if you buy any electronics, you can ask the vendor to plug it in to make sure that it works before taking it home. But I took a chance and just bought it without opening it first.

All the instructions are in Chinese. The CD installation program runs in English.

The printer was covered with orange plastic tape to secure the product during transport.

The printer came with two ink cartridges, a power cable and a USB cord tucked inside.

This printer uses just two ink cartridges. I’m used to printers with separate cartridges for different types of color. But this one just has one cartridge for all colors. Hope it lasts!

Upon setting up the printer, I tested it and it works great! The copier function works fine, too. I’m very happy with the purchase.

Bus rides are either 1 kuai for a non air conditioned bus and 2 kuai for an air conditioned bus. You can buy a bus card which as far as I can tell is called a 公交卡 (gong jiao ka). It’s a plastic card with what seems to be an RFID chip. You load up the card with money and each time you get on the bus, you place it on or near the sensor next to the driver and the display will tell you how many RMB you have left on the card. This is what my card looks like.

To buy a card, go to any newsstand kiosk that you find on street corners and ask if they have any 公交卡 (gong jiao ka). Each time I’ve bought one it’s cost 25 RMB. I’ve heard that if you go directly to a bus station, you can get them for 20 RMB, but 5 kuai ain’t worth the bother.

Once you have a bus card, your next step is to find the nearest Hongqi chain store. Even though it might look like the card has a 20 yuan value, but its got nothing on it. Even though you can buy the bus cards from a newsstand, they can’t add value to the card. You can only do that at a Hongqi. Not all Hongqis can add value to bus cards, but it seems that most do. Right near the cashier at a Hongqi probably mounted on the wall will be a grey colored device where you can check the value on your card. Tell the cashier that you want to add money to your bus pass. I believe the minimum amount you can add is 10 kuai.

There are two methods 50% off or 10% off.

五折

50% off allows you to use get a 20 kuai value on the card for the 10 kuai you put in up front. So with this method, you can take 10 rides instead of just 5 if you paid in cash each time. But you have only until the end of the month to use up the card value before it expires. A great benefit though is that you get free rides for about two hours after you use the card to ride a bus. That means free transfers or return trips within the time frame.

九折

With this method your card value never expires but you’d only get 11 kuai for 10.

Sichuan Provincial Hospital for Women And Children

四川省妇幼保健院 （sìchuān shěng fùyǒu bǎojiàn yuàn）

Website: fybj.net

Dr. Xiao Bing（肖兵）

Dr. Xiao has out patient office hours at the hospital only on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. He is very friendly, helpful and has great English.

When To Go

When you go to see Dr. Xiao on either a Tuesday or Thursday morning, I recommend going early, by 8 am, because it gets VERY crowded. We arrived only at 10:30 am and by that time, his appointment calendar was full for the morning and the registration people weren’t going to allow us to have an appointment. However, because we had already spoken to Dr. Xiao by phone earlier we were able to ask him in person for special permission to register, which he graciously gave us. His nurse then was very kind to help us through the registration process. Takeaway lesson: go early.

Getting There

The hospital is right on the northwest section of the 2nd Ring Road. If you are familiar with the area it is north of the Metro Cash & Carry wholesale store (probably something like a Costco or Sam’s Club) and down the street from the Auchan supermarket (like a Walmart super store).

Hospital Address: 中国四川省成都市金牛区蜀汉路 (map)

Going by Taxi

We were able to take a taxi just by telling the driver to take us to the sìchuān shěng fùyǒu bǎojiàn yuàn. There is a Chengdu city women and children’s hospital also. So the driver may ask to clarify whether it is the Sichuan provincial or Chengdu city women and children’s hospital. You can also tell the driver that the hospital is on the intersection of 2nd Ring Road and Shuhan Road (蜀汉路).

Local Vicinity

On the north corner of the intersection is the Xiqu or West Chengdu Hospital. You don’t want to go there.

To the west of the Xiqu hospital the entire Shuhan street is blocked off for an entire block all the way to Auchan where a subway stop is being constructed. So in the future, it will be convenient to get to this hospital by subway.

On the south corner of the intersection is the women and children’s hospital. Notice the hospital’s sign in red above the building.The three characters say 省 for city, 妇 for mother and 幼 for young/children.

Turn down Shuhan Road (蜀汉路) and you’ll see this sign on the south side of the street just in from the corner.

Registration

The first thing you need to do

Enter the hospital compound via the driveway just to the left of the sign. You will have to navigate around a lot of cars and people coming in and out of the driveway. At the end of the driveway you’ll see this statue.

Look to the right and you’ll see the hospital’s main building.

Walk toward it until you see the ramp and cashier window on the ground floor on the right side of the building.

You’ll need to get a registration form from the information desk which is just opposite the cashier. Notice the girls with the pink caps in the photo below. The registration form is a printed on a half-sheet piece of paper. You may see other people filling out the form there. You’ll need to write down your family name and given name (either Chinese or English is fine). You’ll also need to fill out your date of birth, occupation and residential address. We forgot to bring our passports but in the end we didn’t need to show any form of ID.

After filling out the form head over to the registration windows; there are three of them. Just to the left of the information desk is the pharmacy. There is a LED electronic screen above it as shown below with windows #1 and #2.

That’s not the registration desk. To the left of the pharmacy window are three windows under and even larger LED electronic signboard. I would have posted a picture of the registration desk but one of the pink-hat girls told me I couldn’t take pictures in there. Look for the Chinese word for registration which is 挂号(guàhào) in the large font in the upper left corner of the LED screen. Wait your turn in one of the lines; we used the far right one which had a nice cool breeze from a nearby vent. Show the lady your registration form. We paid ¥14.5 RMB for the registration fee and were given a medical card with its all-important magnetic stripe (almost everything is computerized) along with a medical records handbook.

Tell the registration person that you want to see Xiao Bing yīshēng (医生) and they will give you a registration ticket if an appointment is available. On the LED informational sign above the registration desk you’ll see scrolling information with doctor’s names and whether or not there are any appointment slots available for a particular doctor. Look for Dr. Xiao’s name which is 肖兵. If you see 有号 on the line where you see his name, there are appointment available. But if you see 无号 in red, then unfortunately his schedule is full.

Going to see Dr. Xiao

Dr. Xiao’s office is diagonally across the courtyard. Go out of the registration/pharmacy/cashier area and follow the circular driveway until you see this little pathway.

Walk down and take the second entrance on your left. Notice the sign that says Obstetric Clinic.

Turn right at the little doorway.

When we went today it was very crowded. This line down the little doorway is a line of people queuing up to see the nurse.

A view of the nurse’s station from another angle.

Show the nurse your medical card, records handbook and appointment slip. She will take your blood pressure. Afterwards you’ll need to wait your turn in the waiting area. Some mothers have to wait hours for their appointment. At some point you might need to use the bathroom. Look for this sign.

We really didn’t understand the system of when you get called for your appointment. But perhaps ours was a special case because Dr. Xiao just squeezed us in. In any case, he came out of his office and called us in when it was our turn. He seemed quite knowledgeable and after reviewing Elisabeth’s prior prenatal care from our time in Japan he determined that she needed blood tests for blood sugar (血糖 xuètáng) levels and for liver and a color ultrasound. He also ordered a test of my blood type (血型 xuèxíng). He used the computer and printer in his office to print out slips of paper for the procedures he ordered and a prescription (处方 chǔfāng) for the sugar to be used in the blood sugar test.

This is Noah in outdoor the waiting area.

Paying at the Cashier

Take the orders and prescription(s) to the cashier at the main hospital building. The cashier will ask you to swipe your medical card and the computer will print out a receipt of charges for all procedures and medicine. Our bill for the visit, blood work, sugar and ultrasound was ¥431 RMB. That’s only about  $67 USD … inexpensive medical care without insurance!

After paying, take your receipt and prescription to the pharmacy to get your medicine.

Ultrasound

Then we went to the ultrasound office to schedule an appointment for the ultrasound. The ultrasound office is just opposite the Obstetric clinic. Look for the sign which says Image Dept. There are multiple offices in this department. The ultrasound office is the one to the left of the main door.

We were able to get an appointment for the very next morning! By the way, if you want to know whether your baby is a boy or girl, ask the ultrasound technician to look for the sex of your baby before they do the ultrasound. As a normal practice, they don’t look for this and are unwilling to inform parents of their baby’s sex because some may choose to abort girl babies due to the one-child policy. But as a foreigner, the technician will tell you if you ask in advance. We didn’t ask in advance and so we weren’t able to find out our baby’s gender.

Blood Tests

In the courtyard, look for the sign which says “Clinical Laboratory”.

Before going into the Clinical Laboratory, you’ll first need to get labels printed for your vials of blood which they will take. So first go to the door to the left of the Clinical Laboratory.

Go in there an swipe your medical card at the window and they will give you printed labels for your blood vials. The labels along with your medical card and blood test orders will look like this.

Then take those labels with you to the Clinical Laboratory.

You’ll see two windows where people line up to get their blood drawn.

It looks like they use brand new needles for each patient (because they rip open a needle package for each patient) but they don’t change gloves between patients.

Here’s Elisabeth getting her blood drawn. Immediately afterward she was instructed to mix the sugar we had gotten the day before in 150 ml of water to drink for the blood sugar test. It was a good thing we had brought a bottle of filtered water of our own to mix the sugar into. They don’t provide cups or water there for you.  You need to bring your own.

Here’s me getting my finger pricked in another window for my blood type test. Yeah, I know…I’m almost 40 and don’t know my own blood type!

Hopefully this post will provide helpful information to any English speaking foreigners who need prenatal care in Chengdu and want to try getting it from a Chinese doctor.

Renting an Apartment by Teacher James

Rent House by AskBenny

Rent House 2 by AskBenny

Intermediate: “租房” by CLSPod

Simple-Chinese.com Lesson Lesson 21: Renting Apartment

This written lesson contains a vocabulary list and dialog in both Chinese and English.

Other Video Lessons

• Renting an apartment from VisualMandarin

Written Lessons

• “租 房” Lesson Transcript PDF by iMandarinPod.com
• Integrated  Chinese > Level 1 > Part 2:  Workbook Excerpt PDF
• Renting an Apartment

Vocabulary

Type of Buildings(?)

• 多层住宅 – low rise
• 小高层住宅 – medium(?) rise
• 高层住宅 – high rise
• 别墅
• 排屋
• 公寓
• 商住楼
• 商铺
• 厂房
• 库房
• 车库

Features/Amenities of an apartment

• 厨房
• 床
• 家具
• 有线电视
• 宽带网
• 电话
• 热水器
• 电视机
• 空调
• 洗衣机
• 冰箱
• 煤气
• 暖气
• 汽车库
• 通水
• 通气
• 通电
• 数字电视
• 冰箱
• 沙发
• 衣柜
• 厨具
• 桌子
• 椅子
• 防盗门
• 密封阳台
• 汽车位
• 电梯
• 地下室
• 花园

Nciku Vocab Lists

• Renting an Apartment
• Renting an Apartment & Kunming

How to write Apartment in Chinese by Xi Chen

Room Vocab by by ChineseClass101.com

Where do you live? by Chinese-Tools.com

This short dialog lesson has vocabulary to distinguish between a building (楼房) or a one story house (平房).

Listening Comprehension Practice

康熙来了 2008-02-12 租房给明星好不好

This is a cute skit about two sisters renting an apartment, one of which is crazy about Korean boys. Their pronunciation isn’t that great, but the video is funny.

Renting a House by MandarinTube

This is video is hilarious!

Renting an Apartment by EZY Chinese

Apartment tour translated into Chinese

An American landlord gives a walk-through of an apartment while the Chinese resident interprets in Mandarin.

Related info about Renting in China

Information in English about Renting an Apartment in China

• Finding an Apartment in China…
• How to Rent an Apartment in China | eHow.com
• How to Rent an Apartment in China – HowChinaWorks
• Tip for apartment rental in China
• How to Find a Place to Live in China
• Five Things You Must Know before Renting Service Apartments in Beijing

Real Estate Rental Websites (especially ones for Chengdu)

• Soufun (搜房网) – Chengdu rental listings. Soufun has the most amazing apartment search feature. They have an annotated Google map so you can search for apartments by exact location!
• My House in China – website in English, targeted to foreigners
• cdzf114.com
• homtel.cn – for short term rentals, prices are listed per day
• eeju.com (易居网) – Chengdu rental listings
• cdzfw.com
• 58.com – Chengdu rental listings
• koubei.com – Chengdu
• ganji.com – Chengdu
• ee5e.com – rental listings
• allfang.com – Chengdu
• ttroom.cn
• 51cdhouse.com

Beware of unscrupulous rental agents. Physically visit the apartment and sign a contract directly with the owner, not just with the agent.

Negotiating the Price by Teacher James

Related Lessons

Ayi by Mandarin Network

Inquiry About Hotel Or Serviced Apartment by AskBenny

Making an appointment by Active Chinese

Intermediate: “Housing Market in China” by ChineseClass101.com

Having lived in Beijing for a year, it’s fun to hear the Beijing “er 口音” accent.

Advanced: “Buying a House” by Popup Chinese

Having lived in Beijing for a year, it’s fun to hear the Beijing “er 口音” accent.

Newbie: “Moving” by ChinesePod

Contains a short dialog about one friend telling another friend that he is moving to Canada.

ChinesePod is the king of all Chinese podcasts. I love ChinesePod! They used to offer all levels of lessons for free on their podcast, but now they only provide the Newbie level lessons for free. I like their Menu Stealer video series available on their Vimeo account.

Popup Chinese has a free podcast which includes audio lessons for beginner, elementary, intermediate and advanced levels. You can subscribe to the pocast from iTunes page or just listen to the audio lesson from the lesson page.

Yang Yang, a vivacious Beijinger who lives in Los Angeles, has a fantastic Youtube channel. She seems to have blocked most of her videos from her Youtube channel page. However, you can just search for her username “sloppycheng” to get her videos. Here’s a sample video.

Benny has an incredible number of videos uploaded to his YouTube channel … 599 at present count.  Here is just one of them:

Peggy has a fun YouTube channel with scenes from around Taipei. Here’s a lesson:

ChineseClass101.com also has a free podcast. Check out their iTunes page. Subscribe to their YouTube video channel for 60+ high quality tutorial videos. They have a lot of free lessons which you can listen to on their website. They have lessons for beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. They also have video lessons.

Learn Mandarin Chinese with CLO, an online Mandarin course from Taiwan, has a podcast with 30 lessons. They allow you to download a LOT of transcripts and word review PDF documents. Check out their YouTube channel for some great cartoon videos! Here’s a sample video:

ActiveChinese has a fantastic Youtube channel with animated cartoon videos for learning Chinese. Here’s a sample video:

Goal tracking. Vocab lists with sample sentences, all with playable audio links. Highly recommended!

• Master Chinese Characters – 10 levels from beginner to advanced covers 2,700 characters
• Chinese Media: Read a Newspaper in Chinese – five lessons covering 1,200 characters commonly used in newspapers and magazines
• Integrated Chinese Levels 1, Parts 1 & 2
• Integrated Chinese LVL 2 – Chapter 3
• [Integrated Chinese Level 2] Chapter 11
• [Integrated Chinese Level 2] Chapter 16
• Integrated Chinese – 第十八课
• Integrated Chinese – 第十九课
• Integrated Chinese – 第二十课
• Chinese Lesson Basic Words – 317 words, 660 sentences
• Chinese: Ordering Food 点菜
• Virtual School – Mandarin Chinese 1 Unit 1
• Virtual School – Mandarin Chinese 1 Unit 2
• Virtual School – Mandarin Chinese 1 Unit 3
• Virtual School – Mandarin Chinese 1 Unit 4
• Teach Yourself Chinese
• Practical Audio Visual Chinese 3
• Practical Audio Visual Chinese 3 Ch 13-14
• hsk – 924 words, 521 sentences
• HSK Vocab
• HSK Vocab 2
• HSK Vocab 3
• New Practical Chinese Reader 2 (15-20)
• New Practical Chinese Reader 2 (21-26)
• Practical Audio-Visual Chinese 5- Lesson 13
• A New Chinese Course Book – Lesson 7 – 他是由于输血
• A New China Course Book – Lesson 12 – 中国的社会
• A New Chinese Course Book II – Lesoon 3: 世界人口
• A New Chinese Course Book II – Lesson 14
• A New Chinese Course Book II – Lesson 16
• A New Chinese Course Book II – Lesson 17
• A New Chinese Course Book II – Lesson 22
• A New Chinese Course Book II – Lesson 23 – 《家》
• A New China Course Book – Lesson 24
• A New China Course Book – Lesson 25

CLSPod has a free podcast. Check out their iTunes page.

Mandarin Chinese Lessons with Serge Melnyk is a free podcast with 31 lessons. His website has many more lessons, but you have to signup as a member to listen to them.

This commercial Chinese language website has a great YouTube channel with 11 lessons.

LearnChinesePod is a non-commercial blog with a podcast containing 7 episodes. The website allows you to download PDF transcripts of lessons.

The ChineseLingQ podcast has 10 episodes. Their website allows you to download the mp3 files. The iTunes page lets you stream them.

The Learning Mandarin Podcast is a blog by April Zhang with regular, high quality episodes several times per month ever since 2005 until present day. Click here to subscribe to the podcast in iTunes. You can listen to streaming podcast lessons on PodFeed.

David of FreeChineseBlog.com has created a great website with video Chinese lessons. Although his accent isn’t perfect, he’s got pretty good tones.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Onl44gquEnY

iMandarinPod (based in Tianjin, China) provides a free podcast targeted for the intermediate to advanced levels. The podcast lessons are completely in Chinese.

Survival Phrases offers 15 lessons available via podcast. The first three lessons can be viewed on their website.

World Learner Chinese (based in Taipei, Taiwan) has a podcast with just four basic lessons. However their website has an extensive section free beginner level lessons.

Chinese-Family.com has a great YouTube channel with animated cartoon lesson videos. Here’s one:

This is a fun podcast by two Taiwanese sisters has seven episodes which cover Chinese culture and throws in some Chinese language.

Dyejo’s Mandarin Chinese podcast contains episodes in which a former Mormon missionary to Taiwan reads a list of one thousand Chinese words.

This website has 31 lessons.

The Chinese Outpost has an extensive Introduction to Mandarin Chinese tutorial with many lessons.

This website has a large compilation of Chinese language lesson videos from YouTube broken down by level: beginner, intermediate and advanced levels plus sections for writing and PinYin.

The Mandarin Network has a lot of video lessons available for free with transcripts via paid subscription.

World Nomads provides a single audio lesson. The pronunciation by the “traveller” is really bad, but you can learn some survival vocabulary. You can download the MP3 file and a PDF transcript.

Live Mocha offers basic phrases lessons with flash card quizzes.

• Greetings
• Survival
• Verbs
• Weather
• Fruits – Four levels with English, Simplified, Traditional and audio dialog

LanguageBite offers one free newbie lesson on their website and three video lessons on YouTube.

The Rutgers Multi-Media Chinese Teaching System is an extensive course with many lessons organized into four levels, which you have a choice of learning in either simplified or traditional (complex) characters.

• Level One (35 lessons) – English, Simplified, Traditional
• Level Two (15 lessons)
• Level Three (20 lessons)
• Level Four (10 lessons)

The BBC has a website for learning several languages including Chinese. They have a great starter multimedia interactive slideshow built in Flash that’s reminiscent of multimedia CD-ROMs from the mid 90s. Videos don’t play if you’re not in the UK. The multimedia slideshows are at the newbie level.

• For starters
• Introducing yourself
• Family introductions
• Saying a bit about yourself
• Ordering drinks
• Ordering a meal
• Doing some shopping
• Asking for directions
• Getting around by public transport
• Finding and booking a hotel
• Tones – Game
• Pinyin
• Characters – Game

YY Sophie’s Chinese Lesssons

Sophie, from Taiwan, has a great YouTube channel with many Mandarin Chinese lessons.

Two Chinese Characters

These guys are hilarious! They even sing. Their YouTube Channel is quite amusing. Here’s one of the lessons.

Live Tutoring

This now defunct website still has 11 lessons on its YouTube Channel. Here’s one of them.

Video Carter

Who knows why they are called “Video Carter” but they have language learning videos and a pretty sizeable YouTube Channel. Just turn down your volume as their sound levels are distorted. Here’s one of them.

Hanzi6688 YouTube Channel

Integrated Chinese

ChinesePod created a series of lessons based on a two-year Chinese course called Integrated Chinese. Quite a LOT of educational institutions use the course in their Chinese curriculum. ChinesePod’s blog on Integrated Chinese has a lot of audio lessons.

Resources

Perapera-kun Popup translator for the Firefox Browser

I highly recommend that you install the Perapera-kun Popup translator add-on for the Firefox browser. With this add-on, you can just position your mouse over any Chinese character and a tooltip box will appear containing PinYin so you can know how to pronounce the character (or set of characters) and it will include an English translation. You can read the installation instructions for details.

After you install Perapera-kun, just enable it in the bottom bar of Firefox by selecting the Chinese flag.

Then you can position your mouse over any Chinese characters.

Some of Chinese language resources just list English and Chinese vocabulary without pinyin. However if you install the Perapera-kun Popup translator for Chinese, all you need to do is put your mouse over the Chinese character to see the pinyin and English translation.

Character Stroke Order Lessons

• Arch Chinese is an AMAZING website with animated stroke order characters, printable PDF character writing worksheets
• Animated Chinese Characters
• MyMandarin – click on a character and the popup will animate the drawing of the character with a calligraphy brush and even read the character aloud for you.
• Learn to write Chinese Characters
• The University of Southern California Chinese Department has an interesting website with lessons for teaching character stroke order broken down into lessons for both simplified and traditional characters, showing just one character per page. For each character, they have a video which shows you the proper stroke order to writing the character by hand. If you have Real Player installed on your computer, you can listen to each character spoken.
• Writing Chinese Characters

PinYin

• Chinese Pinyin Combination Chart 1 – every sound has a playable sound button
• Arch Chinese PinYin Table – This highly recommended table has every conceivable Mandarin Chinese sound in PinYin which you can just click to listen to it read aloud for you in every available tone.
• Table of PinYin Pronunciation
• AskBenny’s PinYin Table

Or just watch this video!

Numbers

• Animated Chinese numbers both simple and financial numbers – you can click on a number for an animation of its stroke order
• Table of Numbers with PinYin and both simple and complicated characters

Chinese Dictionaries

Searchable English-Chinese and Chinese-English dictionaries

The Arch Chinese website doesn’t even have a logo, but it is the most incredible Chinese-English dictionary I’ve come across so far. You can search by English, PinYin or characters. The search results have PinYin, characters and audio links that let you hear the pronunciation. And for every character it will display a animation of the character’s stroke order. Sample sentences are also available.

Nciku is a modern website with a great dictionary. Chinese characters have mouseover tooltips with PinYin pronunciation. Many English and Chinese vocabulary words have audio links so you can hear them. You can even draw a character with a mouse and matching characters will appear in real-time on the side for you to select. Clicking on a match will enter the character for you in the search box. Fantastic! Apparently you can sign up for a free account which allows you to create vocab lists for yourself.

Dict.cn is very nice modern website where you can search by characters or English. search results contain sample sentences (if available) and links to related words.

MDBG provides a pretty good Chinese-English dictionary including a version for mobile devices.

Radical Lookup

I spent countless hours in high school and college painstakingly looking up characters in a dictionary first by figuring out what the radical was, counting the number of strokes in the radical, looking up the radical by stroke count, flipping to the page with the list of characters with that radical, squinting to find the right character in the list that used a tiny font and finally flipping to the character’s page. It was a colossal waste of time. If only I had MDBG’s radical/stroke’s lookup page back in 1983!

• MDBG Radical Lookup with pinyin and English
• MDBG Radical Lookup by stroke order, just showing the radical characters
• Popup Chinese’s dictionary has a fantastic search by radical section that is much faster to use than MDBG’s version
• Arch Chinese Radicals

MIT provides many semester long course materials online.

• Chinese I. The readings page contains PDF textbook chapters and audio files.
• Chinese II
• Chinese III
• Chinese IV
• Chinese V
• Chinese VI

Foreign Service Institute

Courses developed by the United States government for training foreign service workers have been made freely available to the public. The FSI Mandarin Chinese course is very extensive and they even have a course for Cantonese. The Mandarin course has the following modules below, each of which  contains a PDF document which you can use to read along with the audio lesson. It seems that they focus on spoken proficiency as their textbooks only contain romanized Chinese in pinyin. Some direct links to their resources are provided below.

• Resource
• Orientation: textbook and workbook
  • Unit 1: Vocab, Audio (Tape 1C-1, Tape 1D-1, Tape 1P-1)
  • Unit 2: Vocab, Audio(Tape 2C-1, Tape 2D-1, Tape 2P-1)
  • Unit 3: Vocab
  • Unit 4: Vocab
• Biographic Information
• Money
• Directions
• Transportation
• Arranging a Meeting
• Society
• Traveling in China
• Life in China
• Car
• Hotel
• Marriage, Birth and Death
• Personal Welfare
• Post Office and Telephone
• Restaurant

Flashcards and Quizzes

• HSK Flashcards – Click on the “study” button for a brilliant flashcard system. You can log in anonymously. Use your keyboard up key to flip a card and left/right keys to advance or go back. Brilliant!
• HSK beginner (by Popup Chinese)
• HSK intermediate (by Popup Chinese)
• HSK advanced (by Popup Chinese)
• Chinese Character Flashcards (by MandarinTools.com)
• Arch Chinese flashcards with vocab from HSK and other readers – a fantastic resource
• MDBG Character Quizzes
• Hanzi Quiz – simple and easy to use
• A is for Love – these are the best of flashcards

Learning Chinese by Topic

Business

• Business vocabulary,  phrases and documents

Discussion Forums for Chinese Learners

• Chinese-forums.com
• ChineseClass101
• CLSPod
• iMandarinPod
• World Learner Chinese

Blogs for Chinese Learners

• ChinesePod
• ChineseClass101

Games

• Digital Dialects
• Kids Learn Chinese online games
• Learn your numbers by playing Mah Jong here or here
• Concentration for simplified characters

Chinese Proficiency Tests

Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK) – 汉语水平考试

HSK is China’s proficiency test.

• HSK Beginner vocabulary wordlist (by Popup Chinese) includes character, pinyin and English
• HSK Flashcards – you can download and print flashcards

Some Newbie Lessons

Click on a phrase to hear the audio. You’ll have to go back each time you do though.

• Greetings
• Expressing Thanks
• Some Basic Terms Related to Food

Conventional Leased Offices

Normally leased office space require lengthy contracts and comes empty (i.e., you need to furnish the office with furniture and equipment).

According to DTZ, as of Q1 2010, Chengdu has 360,600 m² of Grade A commercial office space with a 17 percent vacancy rate. Rent averages at 107 RMB/m²/month (this down from RMB115.9/m²/month in Q4 2008) and is projected to rise by 5 percent by the end of 2010.

For an explanation of the difference between Grades A, B & C of office space read “Categorization of office space is flexible“.

Serviced Offices

Executive suites or business centers, where office space is fully furnished and then rented out to other companies, are called serviced offices in China. Serviced offices normally allow for flexible rental terms.

Serviced Office Providers in Chengdu

• TheMoveChannel
  • South Lippo Tower: 元 3800-8500/workstation/month
  • Times Plaza: 元 2500-4500/workstation/month
  • Shidu: 元 880-1500/workstation/month
• Regus -
  • 48 RMB/person/day
  • 26/F Building A, Times Plaza, 2 Zongfu Road
• serviced-offices.com.cn – four options
  • Times Plaza, Zonfu Road, Jin Jiang District
  • Shangri-La Office Tower, Binjiang East Road, Jin Jiang District
  • Lippo Tower, Kehua Bei Road, Wu Hou District
  • Beixin Street, Jin Jiang District

Chengdu Real Estate Market Studies

• DTZ Property Times Q1 2010
• JLL Property Market (Mar 3-12, 2010)
• DTZ Property Times Q4 2009
• DTZ Property Times Q3 2009
• JLL Property Market (3Q09)
• DTZ Property Times Q2 2009
• DTZ Office Market Brief Q2 2009
• DTZ Property Times  Q1 2008
• DTZ Office Market Brief Q2 2008
• Cushman & Wakefield Office Report (4Q08)
• Jones Lang LaSalle – Impact of Wenchuan Earthquake on Chengdu’s Propery Market (June 2008)
• Savills report on Retail Market (probably dated around 2008)
• Savills report on Residential market (1H/2008)

News/Trends

• Chengdu Office Building Rent Falls by 7% (dated 2009-02-10)
  • late 2008 – Grade A – RMB 115.9/m²/month

Real Estate Companies

• Debenham Thorpe (DTZ)
• Maxxelli
• Savills – Room 1806, Block A, Times Plaza, No. 2 Zongfu Road, Jinjing District
• CB Richard Ellis Chengdu
• Chengdu Today House Information co, ltd. – website has a comprehensive database of available offices for rent with photos. One page is in English.
• Cushman & Wakefield
• Jones Lang LaSalle
• Colliers International