The many ethnic minorities represented here include the Zhuang, Yao, Hui, Miao, Mulao, Maonan and Dong enrich the cultural life of the city. Each minority has its own unique customs and festivals and this means that they are much more abundant here than in many other places elsewhere in China.

Chinese Calligraphy

During the thousands of years old history of the Chinese language, you can clearly see how the tools and materials used for writing have affected the looks of the characters. The oldest traces of Chinese writing consist of pottery and bones with inscriptions where the characters are carved with sharp angles - almost like the Nordic runes. When the Chinese first invented the book, it consisted of bamboo sticks sewn together side by side. Columns of characters were written on each stick with a brush, which worked quite well with the Chinese way of writing columns of characters from right to left. Writing with a brush also made some new freedom in the form of the characters - especially the day that paper was invented!

Chinese cooking

The course for "Chinese Cooking" is mainly for those who are interested in Chinese cooking and for those who wish to learn more about Chinese food. A useful introduction describes the special ingredients and spices used in Chinese cooking, with tips on the basic cooking techniques such as stir-frying, red cooking and steaming. The famous Chinese food in four regions, Peking, Shianghai, Szchuan and Canton in China are introduced. Each section has a description of the region's staple foods and its popular dishes and specialities. The recipes are clearly presented with step-by-step methods and accompanied by color photographs
Chinese Kung-Fu &Chinese Tai Chi
Chinese Kung-Fu &Chinese Tai Chi is the proper term for all the martial arts styles in china. It has been practiced in china for thousands of years. wushu consists of tens of thousands of different external and internal styles including both bare hands and weapons. Some of the well known external styles are shaolinquan, chaquan, Hongquan, Fanziquan and many others. The well known internal styles are Taichi, Bagua, Xingyi, and water styles. wushu has becomes a popular international sport that all people an learn and use to attain its inherent benefits. aside form a means of self-defense, wushu has also been developed into a sport capable of improving a participant's health and fitness, while improving their reactions time, jumping ability, balance, flexibility, coordination, power, and speed even athletes from other sports are taking up wushu training to complement their physical pursuits and to improve the quality of their performance. Today, wushu is also a performing art the performance of superb wushu participants can captivate sand mesmerize an audience.

Cantonese course

Created by mandacentre staff working together with the Office of Education, this course is in two volumes, each requiring about 160 hours of study time. It teaches the basic grammatical structures of the language and vocabulary. These materials will teach you to speak standard Cantonese fluently and grammatically, with acceptable pronunciation, within the scope of topics of everyday life. The texts incorporate a modification of standard Yale Romanization for all basic grammar structures and vocabulary. The voices of native speakers are used on all the cassettes to teach standard grammatical Cantonese. This course is designed to teach only the spoken language.

Chinese Mandarin Pronunciation

you'll need a coach who can explain in clear terms and show you what you need to do with your speech organs to make each sound properly, such as where your tongue should go, and whether your lips should be tight or relaxed. If a person cannot do that, that person cannot teach pronunciation effectively. Chinese is a tonal language. Tones are the changes of the pitch in pronunciation of a syllable. There are 4 tones in Mandarin Chinese. Each Chinese word (character) carries a tone. Different tones carry different meanings.