Pinyin Practice

Every so often I receive requests to add a link to these pages — usually to other sites who are working to deliver a slice of China or Chinese. And in return the other site might add a link to these pages. It helps direct traffic between sites and might possibly result in higher Google rankings. So that’s cool.

Since links are a bit like a business association (or advertising), I like to be a bit selective with who I add to my site. When beijingmadeeasy.com contacted me this morning I was suspicious. The name sounded like too much travel sales and not enough learning. But I was wrong. This site has the goods. Will it really make Beijing easy? I don’t know for sure. But I did find the organization and amount of cultural information refreshing. Even if you are not going to Beijing, this site could prove valuable (check out the section on Drinking Rules).

I was recently made aware of the language log site. Some smart people writing articles on language. The article by Bill Poser entitled “Notes on Chinese Character Simplification” is worth a read and prompted me to re-open the old poll forcing us all to pick our orthographic pony. Chinese Philadelphia Food, also posted by Bill, is another good one.