Learning Chinese IV

I have a new favourite website (http://www.nciku.com) for Chinese - it has pinyin plus you can write characters with your mouse!! Check it out. This is where I will take most of my chinese characters from from now.

Since I've been using my Xiàmén (like shhyah-muhn) 厦门 map recently, I thought I'd discuss compass points and street names here.

It took me a long time to work this out (over a month) because the street names were always changing as you walked along them. First some basics:

Lu (sounds like Lew) 路 street or road

Jie (like gee) 街 street or road

Bei (like bay) 北 north
Nan (like nan) 南 south

Dong (like dong) 东 east

Xi (like shee) 西 west

Zhong (like jong) 中 centre
Da ( like da) 大 big

So Hubin Nan Lu, Hubin Bei Lu and Hubin Xi Lu are, respectively, Lakeside south road, Lakeside north road and Lakeside west road - interestingly these are located around a lake...fancy that.

Now sometimes the same street will change for example: Hubin Nan Lu, Hubin Zhong Lu and Hubin Bei Lu which means that you've walked along south Hubin St, middle Hubin St and north Hubin St. Finally some streets will be called dalu or dajie which translates as a main road - you know, big...

Now if only I could remember this when I'm out instead of needing to refer to my map like an obvious tourist - not that I'm ever going to look like a local ;)

Oh and the other thing is that "face" in China is very important - so don't ask just anyone for directions or you may get sent off in the complete wrong direction just because someone didn't want to show that they didn't know the answer to your question (or didn't understand what you asked).