Happy Chinese快乐学中文.ppt

Happy Chinese 快乐中文 Lesson 1: Zhōngguó 中国 China is a vast land, third largest in area after Russia and Canada and possessing the largest population of any country in the world. The civilization of China is one of the world’s oldest living civilizations. Its written language, existing records of which date back to over 3000 years ago, has a far longer history than any other written system in use today. In traditional times, the Chinese believed their country was a unique land of civilization surrounded on all sides by ‘barbarians’ . Therefore, their country became known as Zhōngguó 中国，literally ‘The Central Kingdom’. What is usually referred to as Chinese is, in fact, the language of China’s largest nationality, the Han. (Hànyǔ 汉语）literally means ‘ the language of the Han’) In the past, the people of ‘The Central Kingdom’ were known as ‘ the people of Han’ and this was the name given to one of China’s earliest and greatest dynasties, the Han Dynasty, which lasted from 206 BC to AD 220. Today, the people of the Han nationality make up over 92 percent of China’s total population. Apart from the Han, there are over fifty other nationalities in China. These minority nationalities constitute only 6.7 percent of the total population, but they occupy about 60 percent of China’s total land area, much of it in the western regions of china and China’s borderlands. Minority nationalities possess their own distinct culture, their own language and often their own writing system. The Uighurs live in Xinjiang in the west of China. They are a Turkic people, culturally quite distinct from the Han Chinese. Most Uighurs are followers of the Islamic faith. The Mongolians live on the plains of Inner Mongolia. They are mainly a pastoral people and excellent horseriders. Many Mongolians live in the traditional yurt and some are still nomadic. The Tibetans live in the high mountainous Qinghai- Tibetan plateau, the traditional home of Lama Buddhism. An animal commonly associated with Tibet