Cantonese, which has up to nine tones as opposed to the five in Mandarin, is much more versatile and one of the richest dialects in Chinese.

Chairman Mao not only introduced Pinyin in China, but also simplified half the Chinese characters, believing that fewer strokes would enable more people to learn to write the characters.

[Powell has said he would look into the cases of a handful of other Chinese scholars with links to the United States -- and raise wider human rights issues with Beijing, including the system under which the academics were arrested. Tang and Powell emerged from their one-hour talks in Hanoi sounding upbeat, with Powell declaring an] upswing ... new opportunities for progress.

It was something of a personal challenge for me to come up with a business suitable for the Internet world and the Internet age.

Love in all eight tones and all five semitones of the word's full octave.

China's territory and sovereignty are indivisible and brook no violation, ... Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territory, which is a historical fact and also the consensus of the international community.