Travel in Beijing - Forbidden City

If you decide to travel in Beijing, the Forbidden City will be one important spot for you.

Introduction of Forbidden City
Lying at the center of Beijing, the Forbidden City, called Gu Gong in Chinese, was the imperial palace for twenty-four emperors during the Ming and Qing dynasties. It was first built throughout 14 years during the reign of Emperor Chengzu  in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Ancient Chinese Astronomers believed that the Purple Star (Polaris) was in the center of heaven and the Heavenly Emperor lived in the Purple Palace. The Palace for the emperor on earth was so called the Purple City. It was forbidden to enter without special permission of the empeor. Hence its name 'The Purple Forbidden City', usually 'The Forbidden City'.


Now known as the Palace Museum, it is to the north of Tiananmen Square. Rectangular in shape, it is the world's largest palace complex and covers 74 hectares. Surrounded by a 52-meter-wide moat and a 10-meter-high wall are more than 8,700 rooms. The wall has a gate on each side. Opposite the Tiananmen Gate, to the north is the Gate of Divine Might (Shenwumen), which faces Jingshan Park. The distance between these two gates is 960 meters, while the distance between the east and west gates is 750 meters. There are unique and delicately structured towers on each of the four corners of the curtain wall. These afford views over both the palace and the city outside. 


The Forbidden City is divided into two parts. The southern section, or the Outer Court was where the emperor exercised his supreme power over the nation. The northern section, or the Inner Court was where he lived with his royal family. Until 1924 when the last emperor of China was driven from the Inner Court, fourteen emperors of the Ming dynasty and ten emperors of the Qing dynasty had reigned here. Having been the imperial palace for some five centuries, it houses numerous rare treasures and curiosities. Listed by UNESCO as a World Cultural Heritage Site in 1987, the Palace Museum is now one of the most popular tourist attractions world-wide.

Travel in Beijing - Forbidden City

You can learn Chinese in Beijing, and travel in Beijing, or if your Chinese can let you do basic communication over China, traveling over China will be more fun for you.

Experience to Learn Chinese at Bridge School

 I’d like to share my experience to learn Chinese process with Chinese learners, When I started learning Mandarine, I got totally overwhelmed. Walked away with a massive headache and overload after every lesson. There's so many new things to learn that it's a huge wall to climb: Pinyin, Characters, Pronounciation, tones (what the #$% is that?), different sentence structure, same word being verb, noun, adverb etc etc.. I bought many Chinese learning books and order Chinese courses online, but still I think I need more.

And I know that the best way to learn one language is to have language environments, so I choose to learn Chinese in Beijing, for I want to learn standard mandarin here, and I searched lots of Chinese language school in Beijing on net, and at last I choose the Bridge School China, which is one of the best Chinese Language School in China to teach foreigners mandarin professional, include one-to-one Chinese courses.

The school bases its emphasis on accelerated learning with small classes and its outstanding language curriculum. You can choose your mandarin courses according to your levels and requires, also Chinese teachers will give you useful advices for you.

Moreover, Bridge School provides foreigner Chinese learners many jobs and opportunities as well, I decide to stay in Beijing, for I love China, and want to learn more, you know that, after graduation, you are still one learner to the society.

I love Bridge School, and my days to learn mandarin here is real happy, I made many foreign and Chinese friends here, and we study Chinese together, and sometimes traveling around Beijing together, remember, travel is one important way to learn Chinese.

Sources from http://www.bridgeschoolchina.com/showcorner.asp?id=421

Learn Chinese Idioms Chengyu Online

Learn Chinese Idioms Chengyu Online

English phrases have their rules, so do Chinese idioms, so when you are learning Chinese idioms, first of all, knowing the rules. Chinese idioms are usually formed with four-character, and in Chinese, Chinese idioms are known as chéngyǔ(Traditional Chinese: 成語; Simplified Chinese: 成语, literally "to become (part of) the language"), and they are widely used in Classical Chinese and also daily life, to make your sentence more lively.

Let’s get know of the following popular Chinese idioms or Chinese Chengyu as follows.

Chengyu in isolation are often unintelligible to modern Chinese, and when students in China learn chengyu in school as part of the Classical curriculum, they also need to study the context from which the chengyu was born. Often the four characters reflect the moral behind the story rather than the story itself. For example, the phrase "破釜沉舟"(pinyin: pò fǔchén zhōu) literally means "break the woks and sink the boats." It was based on a historical account where General Xiang Yu ordered his troop to destroy all cooking utensils and boats after crossing a river into the enemy's territory. He won the battle because of this "no-retreat" policy. The phrase is used when one succeeds by burning the bridge. This particular idiom cannot be used in a losing scenario because the story behind it does not describe a failure.

The more you know Chinese, the more you want to learn more, for such a long history country will provide you Chinese with various cultures for you to explore. And here at Bridge School, you can Learn more Chinese idioms or gain other useful Chinese online materials at Bridge School Forum.

Sources from: http://www.bridgeschoolchina.com/showforum.asp?id=420

Leisure Time: How to Play Chinese Mahjong

Many Chinese people play mahjong for fun in their spare time, so it can be one method for you to learn mahjong in China to have more friends, your leisure time can be more interesting while playing mahjong with chinese friends, and by the way, you can practice your Chinese very well. Anyway, to prevent losing too much money, you can practice your mahjong skill online first. 

Details at Bridge School China Forum.

Learn Chinese is full of fun.
 

This very brief quickstart guide of Mahjong Rules will give you a brief idea of how to play and get you started playing quickly.
 

Online Mahjong Sets consist of 144 tiles which includes 8 bonus tiles.
 

The tiles are divided into three tile types which are Honor, Bonus and Common tile sets.
 

These tiles contain characters including, but not limited to numbers, flowers, wind tiles and bamboo tiles.
 

Each player is dealt a total of 18 tiles, the remaining tiles are made into a mahjong wall. As the game progresses, tiles are removed from the wall to build players hands.
 

Tiles can either be picked from the wall or taken from the discarded tile area to build hands. Sets are created when revealed. Scores are determined and the points shown.
 

Mahjong Club, the mahjong site featured to the left of this page follows the popular Hong Kong rules or Cantonese rules.
 

The winner is the player that makes the matched sets and forms a winning hand before the other players in the game do.
 

Tile sets are matched to make either Pongs (a set of three tiles,) Kongs (a four tile set), Chows (a run of tiles,) and Eyes (a pair of matching tiles.)
 

The winning hand is the first player to make a combination of these with all their tiles!
 

Use these quickstart mahjong rules to get playing quickly or read more in depth rules with our other rules pages.