Today we will talk about how you can use Wikipedia to learn more about Chinese language and culture, and also introduce some sites that have some interesting stories from China.
I’m sure you have all heard of Wikipedia, an online free-content database. The thing that many people might overlook is that you can use it for learning about cultures and language as well! If you are a beginner, you can just use the English version to look up China-related articles, or if you are an advanced student, try looking things up in Chinese. It may be interesting to look up basic things in both languages, and see if the Wikipedia entries for different languages are the same. While you’re at the site, you can use spin-offs like Wikinews to catch up on recent events in the region. Of course, there is the risk that some information is incorrect, but if you’re just practicing your language the content isn’t the most important part. And watch out, Wikipedia can be very distracting if you have things you need to be doing!
I previously introduced some Chinese poetry sites, and now I will do the same with stories. Learning the folktales of a country can be very interesting and helpful in learning their values, at the same time as being rather entertaining. So, here I will post a few sites I have visited that deal with Chinese stories.
In the Chinese section of the LLC, you can find a link to “China the Beautiful” here, you can find a section titled “stories and parable” which leads you to this site : http://www.chinapage.org/story/story.html
This page has links to many short stories with morals, from which you can learn more about Chinese values.
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/china.html : This site also has a few Chinese folktales, all translated into English.
Wikipedia : Here it is again! Wikipedia does not have many stories and folktales, but it does have a good page on Chinese myths and creation stories.
