Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Language
Mandarin is China's official language. In addition to Mandarin, known as
putong hua
, most
Chinese speak local dialects. In Shanghai, the dialect is Shanghainese, or
Shanghai hua
.
Written Chinese uses characters based on pictograms, which were originally pictorial repres-
entations of ideas. Some 6,000-8,000 characters are in regular use; 3,000 are sufficient for
reading a newspaper. In mainland China, simplified characters are used, while Hong Kong
and Taiwan use more complex characters. The standard romanisation system for Chinese
characters is known as hanyu pinyin. It has been in use since 1958, and is used throughout
this topic.
