China is a large country. The population is over 1.3 billion. It has a special culture with a very long history.
Chinese food plays an important role for Chinese families. Different foods have special meanings. The main difference is that Chinese people eat their meals with chopsticks. One of the main foods in Chinese culture is rice. Tea is a favorite drink and it is popular in the market.
Chinese calendar is different from the one used in western countries. New Year's Day is in late winter. It is also called the Spring Festival. It has a big celebration of ringing out the old and ringing in the new. It has special foods and traditions. For example, sweeping the floor before New Year's Day sweeps away all the old year's bad luck.
The Chinese zodiac( 生肖 ), known as Sheng Xiao, follows a twelve-year cycle. Each year is named for an animal. These animal signs are the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and pig. For example, the year that begins in 2016 is the year of the monkey.
Chinese is a complex (复杂的) language. Chinese writing developed almost 4,000 years ago and may even be older. Chinese writing has thousands of characters. A character stands for a word and also a meaning. Besides Putonghua, Chinese people speak six other forms of the language, and there are many kinds of dialects.
