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街头与手作jiē tóu yǔ shǒu zuò
Street Chinese and local craft
A market stall and a shell-carving workshop — two places where the Chinese you need is short, fast and local. Learn the words first, then go out and use them.
Beginner · A22 videos12 wordstwo drills
The words this course runs on
Read through these first. They are what you will hear in the videos, and what both drills ask you for afterwards.
- 算命suàn mìngfortune telling
- 小鸟xiǎo niǎoa small bird
- 市场shì chǎngmarket
- 多少钱duō shao qiánhow much is it
- 便宜pián yicheap
- 贵guìexpensive
- 买mǎito buy
- 老板lǎo bǎnthe shopkeeper
- 贝雕bèi diāoshell carving
- 手工shǒu gōngmade by hand
- 师傅shī fua skilled craftsman
- 好看hǎo kàngood-looking
Watch the series
2 videos, in order. Pick a chapter to jump straight to the part the words come from.
Part 1Street Chinese at a market stall
1:49
Part 2Craft vocabulary from a school trip
2:21
Practise what you heard
Two drills over the same 12 words: type them from the characters, then recognise them by ear.
Word 1 of 120 right so far
Read the word, then type its pinyin. Tones and spaces do not matter.
Where these words get used
Every course in the library starts as something that happened in Beihai — a class, a game, a market stall — and the photographs here are from the same days.
