Chinese Voices Project

Welcome to Chinese Voices, a collection of mini-essays with mp3 audio for students of Chinese language and culture. All of the selections are written by savvy young Beijingers and are read in their own voices. Each piece offers a perspective on modern life in Beijing you won't find in a Chinese language textbook or the China Daily.

Subject Areas

To get started, just pick a subject area from the list below and choose a lesson topic that interests you. You can view the Chinese text in a browser or copy and paste it into Clavis Sinica to learn the meaning, structure, and usage of any unfamiliar characters or compounds it contains.

Arts & Culture	Family & Friends
City Life	Computers & Technology
Consumer Culture	Education
Foreign Affairs	Places
Social Issues	Work & Money

Click on a subject area from this list to view all of the lesson topics in that category. Some of the entries provide a "Read and Hear" link that allows you to view and listen to the text simultaneously. Click on any Chinese character in the text reader to display the pinyin and meaning of the character and the compound word of which it is a part.

Some entries also provide a "Flashcards" link. Click on this link to drill yourself on the vocabulary introduced in that essay.

The two numbers after each title represent the piece's approximate difficulty level and length in characters. The difficulty level of each text is based on the usage frequency of of the characters it contains, with 1.0 being the easiest and 3.0 the most difficult.

You can also view a complete listing of all topics in order of difficulty, or join a conversation about your favorite essays on our new discussion board.

Recent Additions

Here are some of the latest new entries on the site:

Roast Duck and Pancakes (1.3 / 430)
Emily Fang
     The names of these two Beijing culinary specialties have taken on new meanings among foreigners and Chinese in recent years, as a shorthand for distinguishing who's hot and who's not on an increasingly public dating scene.

 

Boycott France (1.6 / 576)
Lynn Long
     Recent events in France in the wake of the Tibet unrest have led for calls for a boycott of French goods in China and demonstrations in front of Carrefour department stores. Many Chinese, however, reject such tactics, and urge a more open-minded consideration of the issues.

 

Visas and Vodka (1.1 / 505)
Joanna Hsu
     Beijng's Chaoyang district is known for its glittering highrises, glamorous shops, and ritzy cosmopolitan lifestyle. It is also home to a remarkable concentration of embassies and bars, all of which serve, in their own ways, the noble cause of cross-cultural understanding!

 

Looking for Love Online (1.4 / 406)
Lynn Long
      Dating websites have become very popular in Beijing, where posting the right kind of personals ad can yield dozens of replies within minutes. Whether their interest is the kind you're looking for is another question altogether.

 

I Love China (1.1 / 376)
Joanna Hsu
      With the help of the internet, a new patriotic movement has arisen in China as a response to recent unrest in Tibet and what are widely perceived as attempts to sabotage the Beijing Olympic games.

 

The Gay / Lesbian Scene in Beijing (1.5 / 438)
Emily Fang
      Attitudes towards homosexuality are rapidly becoming more accepting in China's major cities. Bars catering to "comrades" and "lalas" abound. For foreign visitors, though, the social rules may take some getting used to.

 

Join a conversation about your favorite essays on our new discussion board!