Mandarin Cards

The Chairman’s Bao is the first ever online Chinese newspaper, simplified for students of Mandarin. We aim to provide articles which are interesting, insight…

Haven’t talked about language on here in a while, but yep, I’m still studying Chinese! One of my ol’ college buddies who I shared a common major with and who I studied abroad with in Shanghai, and who I had Chinese class with, and who’s great and I obviously miss, shared a link to this neat site that I’ll share here. The video will explain it better than I can and it’s not long so give it a look!

and here’s a link to the site:

http://www.mychineseboyfriend.com/boba-tea-flavors-in-chinese/

Pleco translated boba as 波霸 bōbà . That seemed easy enough to me, so I told the milk tea place "我要一杯波霸奶茶”. He looked down at his menu and back up at me with some hesitance and said 好的.

I was really confused when he proceeded to make me a green colored milk tea without boba. Only to find out from my Chinese teacher that they call boba 珍珠 zhēnzhū or "pearls."

Then, through much laughter, she proceeded to tell me that 波霸 bōbà is a slang word for a woman with big breasts.

你的朋友给你打电话！

打电话 - dă diànhuà // make a phone call

Monetary Terms in Mandarin

The proper terms for talking about money are: 钱， 元， 角. However except for 钱, you won’t hear the other two used very often in everyday encounters.

钱 qián // Cash, Money

元 yuán // 1 Whole Monetary Unit

角 jiăo // 1/10(0.1) Monetary Unit

The colloquial terms for talking about money are 块， 毛.

块 kuài // Used instead of 元(yuán)

毛 máo // Used instead of 角 (jiăo)

In a conversation, you may hear these words used like this:

客户：一斤荔枝多少钱？

卖家：六块五毛。两斤十二块钱。

Kèhù: Yī jīn lìzhī duōshǎo qián? Mài jiā: Liù kuài wǔmáo. Liǎng jīn shí’èr kuài qián.

Buyer: How much is 500g of lychee?