Hao Hao ReportThe best China news and blog posts

In my opinion, writing Chinese words with the Latin character set and neglecting tone marks is the equivalent of writing English words with dots in place of the vowels. Yes, it’s possible to guess the missing information from context, but it’s not a very complete writing system.

This tool is used to display the phoenetic pronunciation (i.e. pinyin) when you hold the mouse over a Chinese Character. It also displays a neato HELP question mark, as well as a dotted line underneath the text to tell the readers that there’s a little something else waiting for them.

The opening salvo in a debate over the romanization of road signs. A scrappy debate in the comments, too.

"Writing Chinese words with the Latin character set and neglecting tone marks is the equivalent of writing English words with dots in place of the vowels."

Google has released a Pinyin-based character-input method for Windows systems. It offers a number of special features … download the program from this page.

According to a somewhat rumour-like posting on a message board, Taiwan may be looking at switching to Hanyu pinyin - at least officially. 50 comments in 24 hours at the Duck, "hot topic" doesn't cover it.

This post is an account of what happens when one gets bitten by a dog in China; where to go for medical help and what ‘they’ actually do to you. Included are many useful Chinese words written in Chinese, Pinyin, and English.

Here's to another 50 years of mo rhyming with guo!

Floorplanner.com, a very handy online tool to create and share interactive floor plans for your house or office space has just released a Chinese version. It's FREE for personal use :-) Check it out at www.floorplanner.cn

The Xinhua website says this article by the Los Angeles Times sensationalises the anti-satellite test that China carried out in January 2007. I am not sure why - the article is quite moderate in tone and even reminds people that Taiwan is a rogue province.