I had a conversation with a friend who shared my first name, Kevin. “Why do you go by Bowen, anyways?” he asked. At the ...

You might recognise pinyin from your textbooks; they are the annotations above each Chinese character. The Hanyu Pinyin system has helped billions of people learn to read, write and speak Chinese.

Karen I. Chen is a writer, editor, and travel advisor. Karen's work has appeared in publications including The Wall Street Journal, Food & Wine, Departures, and more. While the prospect of ...

Burt: Correct! Mandarin characters don't give us the sound of a word, so the Chinese invented pinyin to help their learners. They took the letters of the Roman alphabet, the same we use for ...