Chinese Language and Charcater

China Travel Services

Chinese official language is Standard Chinese of Mandarin (Putonghua, based on Beijing Dialect). In China, there are many kinds of dialects, such as Yue (Cantonese), Wu (Shanghaiese), Minnan (Hokkien-Taiwanese), xiang, Gan, and Hakka dialects, as well as minority languages. In 1958, the First National People's Congress approved, at its Fifth Session, the adoption of the Pinyin (Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet) for spelling Chinese names and places in Roman letters, but the Pinyin system was not popularly used until the late 1970s. Pinyin is now widely seen in China, and it replaces earlier Romanization spelling systems