Creativity Kit: Holiday Shopping in China and Measure Words

December is upon us, and for those of us who celebrate the holidays, that means lots of shopping!  Great holiday gifts can be found in Chinese shops.  And, if you happen to be abroad for business, you might be lucky enough to visit famous shopping areas like Temple Street in Kowloon, Hong Kong and Nanjing Road in Shanghai.

A few weeks ago, we learned how to count in Chinese, concentrating especially on the numbers zero to ten. As there’s only so much you can do with saying the digits by themselves, we should learn how to apply them in everyday situations, such as shopping. Chinese is unique in that, in order to describe quantities of nouns, you must use a “measure word.”

Let’s say you are having lunch at one of your favorite Chinese restaurants. A man enters the restaurant and said to the waitress, “yí gè rén.” The waitress points at a table and he sits down. What did the man say?

Our mystery word, gè, is a commonly-used measure word in Mandarin. English speakers use measure words when describing units of mass nouns, such as “a loaf of bread” or “a grain of rice.” However, English does not usually require a measure word with countable nouns, such as in the example above (“one person”). Mandarin, on the other hand, requires that a measure word be used when a noun is being quantified in some way.

What if you’re with a date? You might be tempted to say èr gè rén. However, when using the number two to count nouns, you must use liăng.

More on Measure Words

Gè acts as a catch-all generic measure word that you can use when one can’t remember the other ones.  Yes, other ones! Mandarin has a large assortment of measure words, but we’ll only look at a few of the more commonly-used ones in this blog post.

A measure word not only indicates that a quantity is being discussed; it also describes the nature of the substance or object described.

Who are we shopping for?

Let’s pretend you’re a college student spending a semester abroad in China. It’s early December, and you figure it’s a good idea to do some holiday shopping for your family and friends back home, so you take the train into the Shanghai city center to take advantage of the multitude of shopping options.

Diligent student that you are, you know that many of the items you will encounter uses a different measure word. While on the train, you review a list of measure words in the back of your Chinese textbook. Upon reaching Shanghai, you set off to Nanjing Road with a wallet full of yuan and a head full of measure words.

Shanghai No. 1 Department Store

This large department store is your first stop. At the cosmetics section on the ground floor, you sniff around the samples and find a perfume you like. Grandma would love a small bottle of this, you think. The lady at the counter retrieves the bottle from the glass case and says aloud as she writes on the charge slip,

You then go upstairs to the men’s clothing section, where you see a colorful assortment of ties. Dad could use some new ties, you think. Finding two colorful silk ties, you present them to the clerk at the register. You say to her,

Tiáo is used for nouns that are long and flexible, such as fish, rivers, pants, and skirts.

Shanghai Foreign Language Bookstore

Swinging back to Fuzhou Road, you step into the Shanghai Foreign Language Bookstore. After sorting through piles of Harry Potter books and translations of Romance of the Three Kingdoms , you suddenly spot a thick book on Chinese archaeology behind the counter that your brother would love.  You greet the clerk and say,

Bĕn is used for books and items that come in volumes, such as magazines.

The Tea Shop

Among rows of glass jars, you find your favorite green tea, Long Jing (Dragonwell in English). You decide to buy two quarter-kilo bags of the mid-grade Long Jing tea – one for a friend and one for Mom. You turn to the clerk and say,

Next door to the tea shop, you see a new kitchen supply store has opened.  You step inside and see a chef’s knife with an intricately carved handle. I could use a Christmas present too, you think. You pull out your wallet and see that the tea purchase set you back more than you thought. However, there’s just enough yuan remaining for this lovely knife and a train ticket back to your dormitory. You point to the knife and say to the clerk,

Bă is used for nouns that can be grabbed, held, or objects with handles, which includes keys, scissors. Bă can also be used to describe a “handful” of a substance.

Let’s review what you’ve bought today:

Practicing Measure Words with the Sifteo Cubes

Start by reviewing your new vocabulary, including both the measure words and the nouns with which they are associated. I would suggest placing the measure word next to the noun so that you can remember them together.

In one example, I left the noun, “water,” alone. Water can be modified by a few different measure words, such as “a cup of water” (yì bēi shuĭ) and “a drop of water” (yì dī shuĭ).

Practice measure words with Creativity Kit!

Sort the measure words to the associated English and Chinese words!

When you’ve finished reviewing the vocabulary, practice using the measure words and nouns together with different numbers.

Practice your Chinese measure words and numbers with Creativity Kit!