| Aomen, better known as Macau, was settled by the Portuguese in 1557 but has recently been returned to China. The character ao means "obscure" and men means "gate." |  |
| Bei is a directional word meaning "north." Jing means "capital." Beijing is, indeed, the capital of China and is located in the north. You may have heard this city formerly called Peking. |  |
| Chengdu is one of the oldest cities in China and was, at various times, the imperial capital. Cheng means "walled city," which it was in the past. Du means "metropolis." |  |
| You might better know this place as Chungking. Chong means "important." Qing is made up of two radicals. The upper radical stands for "shelter" while the lower radical stands for "big." |  |
| Guangzhou straddles the Pearl River and many of its occupants live in boats. Guang is composed solely of the radical for "shelter." Zhou means "islets in a river." Guangzhou was previously known as Canton. |  |
| Harbin is located in Heilongjiang province in northern China along a tributary of the Amur River (Heilongjiang or "Black Dragon River"). The first character, ha, stands for "laughter" or "happy." The middle character, ehr (shown as "r" in this word), translates as something like "yours." The final character, bin, has the radicals for "water" and "shelter" and means "river bank." |  |
| The first character, lha, includes the radical for "hand" but is really only used to refer to the sound "la." The right-hand character, sa, is made up of several parts, including the top symbol which refers to "grass." However, this symbol is used to refer to the sound "sa." |  |
| Qing can mean "blue" or "green" or "black," all colors of the sea. Dao means "island." |  |
| Shang means "above." Hai means "sea." Shanghai is located just above the sea. |  |
| Tian can mean "sky," "heaven," or "day." Jin sometimes means "ferry." I think of Tianjin as meaning "sky ferry." The city of Tianjin is located in Tianjin province. |  |
| The character wu means something like "military" and is also the name of a dynasty. The lower left radical of wu means "stop." Han includes the symbol for water and means "Chinese." Wuhan is located at the juncture of the Han River (Han Jiang) and the Yangtze. |  |
| You might recognize both of these characters if you have already studied the Provinces of China section of this presentation. Xi means "west" and an means "peace." Xi'an was a capital city during several dynasties. |  |
| Xiang is a great character. The top portion of the character means "rice" and the bottom portion means "sun." Together they mean "fragrant." There must be a certain time of the year when the rice paddies smell so sweet. Gang means "harbor." Hong Kong, as this city is more commonly known, means "fragrant harbor." |  |
Improve your memory! Play Chinese Concentration!
Many thanks to ocrat.com at http://www.ocrat.com/ocrat/
for their "Chinese-related web pages with a focus on
Chinese language learning for English speakers."
The above characters are from this site.
Map of China from Graphic
Maps.