Learn Chinese culture and custom of Spring Festival (part 1)

Explore Chinese Spring Festival customs, decorations, foods such as pancake and stinky tofu, and performances like lion dance, while learning eight-diagram tactics, legends, blessings, and Lunar New Year vocabulary.

Explore Spring Festival culture and customs, including Guo Nian, family reunions, red couplets, firecrackers, dumplings, red envelopes, and festive visits that brighten the lunar new year.

Learn how to craft spring couplets with antithetical lines on both sides of the door and a horizontal scroll above the gate, on red paper for good fortune.

Learn essential spring festival vocabulary, including chun lian, ren men, men, hao yun, mao bi, and shu fa, with examples about last year qu nian and calligraphy da sai.

People go to the Long Xing temple during the Spring Festival to seek blessings, walk the steps, and admire red lanterns and the Long Xing pagoda.

Learn temple vocabulary: si miao, ta men, hen duo, la zhu, fo ta, deng long, with examples like they lighted the temple and the pagoda atop a mountain.

Explore the temple fair, an ancient traditional folk custom around Chinese New Year, featuring worshiping deities, entertainment, shopping, and a crowded visit to cheng huang miao.

Learn key vocabulary for the temple fair video, including miao hui (temple fair), traditional culture, culture, and custom, with example sentences about going to the temple fair and joining activities.

Explore how spring rolls symbolize welcoming spring in the spring festival, using thin dough sheets rolled and fried, alongside fried chicken cutlet and roast young pigeon in southern China.

Learn ci hui vocabulary for spring rolls (chun juan) and zha ji pai (fried chicken cutlets), with examples using wo men and ta.

Explore mutton kebabs from Inner Mongolia, with chefs in national costume and a man buying kebabs, within the context of Chinese spring festival culture.

Learn essential vocabulary for key Chinese terms, including mutton kebab kao yang rou chuan, chef chu shi, and costume fu zhuang, with example sentences showing usage in context.

Explore Chinese spring festival foods through sizzling tofu and dishes like dried tofu, tofu shrimp, and tofu soup, while savoring sizzling bean jelly and memories of grandma's cooking.

Master vocabulary from the sizzling tofu video, including dou fu, du te de, feng wei, kao you yu, liang fen, with example sentences.

Learn traditional Chinese mutton soup, washing mutton and sheep bone, adding parsley, ginger, rice wine and spices, simmering 1–2 hours, then enjoying the meat and soup with fried dough twists.

Learn key vocabulary from the mutton soup video, including ci hui, yang rou tang, dong tian, bi jiao hao, fang fa, zhu ming de, and zuo jia.

Explore stinky tofu, a popular food in China from Changsha and Shaoxing, as chefs prepare bowls and seasonings amid busy stalls and eager visitors.

Explore essential Chinese vocabulary from the stinky tofu video, including ci hui, liu xing de, chou de, fu wu yuan, and practical sentence patterns for describing food.

Learn key vocabulary (ci hui) for the year of the dog, including gou nian and xing fu, and practice the sentence zhu yuan da jia gou nian xing fu.

Observe a street scene where a boy spots a handcrafted slingshot among toys, picks it up, and tries it.

Learn key Chinese vocabulary from the handcrafted slingshot video, including dan gong for peddle bow, shou bao for handbag, and nan hai for boy, with example sentences.

Explore how sugar figurines are crafted from sucrose and maltose into figures, animals, and flowers, highlighting traditional Chinese manual skills and folk-custom culture.

Learn Chinese vocabulary for the Spring Festival sugar figurine video, including tang ren, tang, yi ge, hou zi, ji qiao, tiao zhun, gang qin, xu yao, and dong wu.

Learn essential vocabulary for the ring-toss game, including you xi, kai shi, can jia, tou zhi, guan kan, pu tong de, and liang fang zi.

Discover how children express creativity by painting porcelain dolls, choosing colors from pictures or their imagination, with parent guidance for younger kids, in a playful cultural context.

Learn Chinese vocabulary from the porcelain doll video, including tu se for paint, lv se for green, wan ou for doll, nv hai for girl, and li wu with examples.

Explore the Eight-Diagram tactics, a complex military game from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, said to be invented by Zhuge Liang, and featuring heroes from Wei, Shu, and Wu.

Learn core Chinese vocabulary from this video, including ci hui, mo shu, wang guo, nv shi, and ce lue, with examples and notes on Chinese word order differences.

Learn how to make the northern Chinese pancake, a staple food, by pouring batter into a pan to form a round cake, then adding egg, scallion, sausages, sauces, and vegetables.

Learn essential Chinese food vocabulary for the pancake video, including jian bing (pancake), ji dan (egg), shu cai (vegetables), shui guo (fruit), and related phrases for breakfast and dining.

A painter transforms a Chinese name into a painting by replacing strokes with flowers, birds, grass, fish, and other symbols, adding butterflies and a sun—creating wall art or a gift.

Strike the bell to invite fortune, happiness, and good health for the new year. Climb to the bell tower, watch couples strike it three times, and hear the loud echo.

Learn Chinese vocabulary for the spring festival video, including ci hui (vocabulary), zhong/ling meaning bell, qi zhi meaning flag, and qiao ji meaning strike, with example sentences showing usage.

Explore a quiz that tests translating spring festival terms like ce yan, chun lian, deng long, and jian bing, and learn about one-on-one online instruction via Skype or WeChat.