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100-498: Shekou ( Chinese : 蛇口 ; pinyin : Shékǒu ) is an area at the southern tip of Nanshan District , Shenzhen , Guangdong Province , China . It faces Yuen Long , Hong Kong across the Shenzhen Bay . It has been designated as a Free Trade Zone by the government, alongside Qianhai , Hengqin and Nansha New Area . The area was formerly a customs station of Bao'an County . On 31 January 1979, it became officially known as

200-464: A nucleus that has a vowel (which can be a monophthong , diphthong , or even a triphthong in certain varieties), preceded by an onset (a single consonant , or consonant + glide ; a zero onset is also possible), and followed (optionally) by a coda consonant; a syllable also carries a tone . There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where

300-457: A subject–verb–object word order , and like many other languages of East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic–comment construction to form sentences. Chinese also has an extensive system of classifiers and measure words , another trait shared with neighboring languages such as Japanese and Korean. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction , pronoun dropping , and

400-505: A Chinese character is the morpheme, as characters represent the smallest grammatical units with individual meanings in the Chinese language. Estimates of the total number of Chinese words and lexicalized phrases vary greatly. The Hanyu Da Zidian , a compendium of Chinese characters, includes 54,678 head entries for characters, including oracle bone versions. The Zhonghua Zihai (1994) contains 85,568 head entries for character definitions and

500-595: A Shanghai resident may speak both Standard Chinese and Shanghainese ; if they grew up elsewhere, they are also likely fluent in the dialect of their home region. In addition to Standard Chinese, a majority of Taiwanese people also speak Taiwanese Hokkien (also called 台語 ; 'Taiwanese' ), Hakka , or an Austronesian language . A speaker in Taiwan may mix pronunciations and vocabulary from Standard Chinese and other languages of Taiwan in everyday speech. In part due to traditional cultural ties with Guangdong , Cantonese

600-451: A base for a small contingent of foreign oil platform workers, since qualified personnel were not available locally. As a result of this first mover advantage in catering for mainly western tastes in housing, food and drink, entertainment and schooling, at a time when no alternatives were available in the area, Shekou gradually became home to the majority of the expatriate population working in and around Shenzhen and part of its hinterland in

700-591: A beach. The famous landmark of the city, Zhuhai Fisher Girl , stands elegantly on a boulder in Xianglu Bay; the statue is draped by a fishnet and holds a pearl high in the air with both hands up to the sky, symbolising a vigorous and lively Zhuhai welcoming visitors from all over the world. It was erected in 1982 by Pan He , a professor from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts , and is 8.7 metres (29 ft) tall and composed of 70 pieces of granite. Visitors can view

800-462: A central variety (i.e. prestige variety, such as Standard Mandarin), as the issue requires some careful handling when mutual intelligibility is inconsistent with language identity. The Chinese government's official Chinese designation for the major branches of Chinese is 方言 ; fāngyán ; 'regional speech', whereas the more closely related varieties within these are called 地点方言 ; 地點方言 ; dìdiǎn fāngyán ; 'local speech'. Because of

900-469: A complete make-over of Sea World , turning it into a western-style entertainment area centered on the grounded Minghua (明华) ship, a 14,000 ton, 168 m long vessel built in 1962 as a French ferry vessel purchased by China in 1973. It is commonly, though incorrectly, referred to by many locals as French President Charles De Gaulle 's private yacht. Minghua is now completely landlocked due to extensive local land reclamation and redevelopment efforts. Shekou

1000-492: A comprehensive supply chain and almost any of the raw materials needed by the printer consumables industry can be provided locally. The prefecture-level city of Zhuhai administers three county-level divisions and four special economic districts, all of which are districts . Zhuhai also is served by airports outside: Zhuhai residents may also use Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport ( IATA : SZX , ICAO : ZGSZ ) and travel there by bus or ferry. Zhuhai Railway Station

1100-597: A compromise between the pronunciations of different regions. The royal courts of the Ming and early Qing dynasties operated using a koiné language known as Guanhua , based on the Nanjing dialect of Mandarin. Standard Chinese is an official language of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), one of the four official languages of Singapore , and one of

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1200-700: A corresponding increase in the number of homophones . As an example, the small Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary lists six words that are commonly pronounced as shí in Standard Chinese: In modern spoken Mandarin, however, tremendous ambiguity would result if all of these words could be used as-is. The 20th century Yuen Ren Chao poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den exploits this, consisting of 92 characters all pronounced shi . As such, most of these words have been replaced in speech, if not in writing, with less ambiguous disyllabic compounds. Only

1300-678: A frost has never been recorded in the city centre. Conversely, extreme heat waves do not occur as they do further inland. Being named one of the most liveable cities in China, real estate is robust here. Residents from the mainland, especially those from the North, will buy homes and spend their winters in Zhuhai. In 1980 the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) announced that the city of Zhuhai would be one of four special economic zones. Those doing business in

1400-564: A millennium. The Four Commanderies of Han were established in northern Korea in the 1st century BCE but disintegrated in the following centuries. Chinese Buddhism spread over East Asia between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE, and with it the study of scriptures and literature in Literary Chinese. Later, strong central governments modeled on Chinese institutions were established in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, with Literary Chinese serving as

1500-651: A regional hub for transportation. The outstanding geographic location, a wide range of supporting infrastructure and a deep-water port serve as a major attraction for foreign capital. Utilized foreign investment reached US$ 10.344 billion in 2008. Among the top 500 enterprises worldwide, 19 of them have investment projects in Zhuhai such as ExxonMobil , BP , Siemens , Carrefour and Matsushita . Industrial development in Zhuhai focuses on five new high-tech and heavy industries including electronics , computer software, biotechnology and pharmacy , machinery and equipment as well as petrochemical industries. Aiming to strengthen

1600-538: A secure reconstruction of Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the higher-level structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, but has not been convincingly demonstrated. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty . As the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have repeatedly sought to promulgate

1700-557: A significant portion of the population is now made up of Mandarin -speaking economic migrants originally from inland provinces. The core of Zhuhai, Xiangzhou District along with Macao , in the northeastern portion of the administrative division, are part of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area , the biggest built-up area in the world with more than 65,565,622 inhabitants as of the 2020 census, encompassing Shenzhen, Dongguan, Foshan, Zhongshan, Macau,

1800-503: A similar way to the use of Latin and Ancient Greek roots in European languages. Many new compounds, or new meanings for old phrases, were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to name Western concepts and artifacts. These coinages, written in shared Chinese characters, have then been borrowed freely between languages. They have even been accepted into Chinese, a language usually resistant to loanwords, because their foreign origin

1900-678: A single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in a family . Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese , of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin with 66%, or around 800 million speakers, followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min ), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghainese ), and Yue (68 million, e.g. Cantonese ). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with

2000-610: A unified standard. The earliest examples of Old Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones dated to c.  1250 BCE , during the Late Shang . The next attested stage came from inscriptions on bronze artifacts dating to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE), the Classic of Poetry and portions of the Book of Documents and I Ching . Scholars have attempted to reconstruct

2100-563: A variety of Yue from a small coastal area around Taishan, Guangdong . In parts of South China, the dialect of a major city may be only marginally intelligible to its neighbors. For example, Wuzhou and Taishan are located approximately 260 km (160 mi) and 190 km (120 mi) away from Guangzhou respectively, but the Yue variety spoken in Wuzhou is more similar to the Guangzhou dialect than

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2200-596: Is Taishanese. Wuzhou is located directly upstream from Guangzhou on the Pearl River , whereas Taishan is to Guangzhou's southwest, with the two cities separated by several river valleys. In parts of Fujian , the speech of some neighbouring counties or villages is mutually unintelligible. Local varieties of Chinese are conventionally classified into seven dialect groups, largely based on the different evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials: Proportions of first-language speakers The classification of Li Rong , which

2300-591: Is a prefecture-level city located on the west bank of the Pearl River estuary on the central coast of southern Guangdong province, People's Republic of China , on the southeastern edge of the Pearl River Delta . Its name literally means "pearl sea", which originates from the city's location at the mouth of the Pearl River meeting the South China Sea . Zhuhai borders Jiangmen to the west, Zhongshan to

2400-689: Is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China , as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora . Approximately 1.35 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language . Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be dialects of

2500-595: Is a park of 1.39 square kilometres (0.54 square miles), including an 80,000 m (861,113 sq ft) lake. It features a partial reconstruction of the Old Summer Palace in Beijing which was destroyed during the Second Opium War and was never rebuilt on its original site. The coast of Xianglu Bay is considered the "symbol" of Zhuhai, offering a scenic view of Pearl River Delta with silt-rich water, rocks, and

2600-435: Is called either 华语 ; 華語 ; Huáyǔ or 汉语 ; 漢語 ; Hànyǔ ). Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. The governments of both China and Taiwan intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. Therefore, it is used in government agencies, in the media, and as a language of instruction in schools. Diglossia is common among Chinese speakers. For example,

2700-453: Is located at the western end of Gongbei Port of Entry and Portas do Cerco at the border of Zhuhai and Macau. There are frequent high speed trains to Guangzhou, Guilin, Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and other main cities in China. The intercity railway between Zhuhai Gongbei and Zhuhai Jinwan International Airport is under construction. It is expected to be opened to Hengqin in November 2019, and

2800-641: Is located in one of the major fishing areas of China and is core to the Wanshan ocean development testing zone. However, Perna viridis , a species of green mussel, was found to be contaminated by HCHs, DDTs, and PCBs. In April 2023 the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has published for the Hengqin economic development zone a list of industries that are illegible for investment policies, including income tax benefits for workers. The stated aim of

2900-450: Is more internationally oriented than many universities in China. Many students here prepare to go abroad to finish their junior and senior years. Despite the shortage of higher education, Zhuhai government has been paying a lot of attention to primary and secondary education. From 2007, high school students in Zhuhai needn't pay school fees any more. As a result, there are many famous high schools in Zhuhai. Zhuhai No.1 High School (ZH1Z)

3000-595: Is often described as a 'monosyllabic' language. However, this is only partially correct. It is largely accurate when describing Old and Middle Chinese; in Classical Chinese, around 90% of words consist of a single character that corresponds one-to-one with a morpheme , the smallest unit of meaning in a language. In modern varieties, it usually remains the case that morphemes are monosyllabic—in contrast, English has many multi-syllable morphemes, both bound and free , such as 'seven', 'elephant', 'para-' and '-able'. Some of

3100-564: Is one of the most competitive high schools in Guangdong Province, and also a member of the Guangdong "Six Schools Union". Dulwich International High School Zhuhai , QSI International School of Zhuhai , and Zhuhai International School serve expatriates and/or use foreign educational systems. Zhuhai Japanese Saturday School ( 珠海日本人補習校 ) is a supplementary school for overseas Japanese in Zhuhai. It holds classes at QSI School. Zhuhai

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3200-445: Is only about an eighth as many as English. All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones to distinguish words. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 12 tones, depending on how one counts. One exception from this is Shanghainese which has reduced the set of tones to a two-toned pitch accent system much like modern Japanese. A very common example used to illustrate

3300-668: Is specifically meant. However, when one of the above words forms part of a compound, the disambiguating syllable is generally dropped and the resulting word is still disyllabic. For example, 石 ; shí alone, and not 石头 ; 石頭 ; shítou , appears in compounds as meaning 'stone' such as 石膏 ; shígāo ; 'plaster', 石灰 ; shíhuī ; 'lime', 石窟 ; shíkū ; 'grotto', 石英 ; 'quartz', and 石油 ; shíyóu ; 'petroleum'. Although many single-syllable morphemes ( 字 ; zì ) can stand alone as individual words, they more often than not form multi-syllable compounds known as 词 ; 詞 ; cí , which more closely resembles

3400-653: Is the first city in China to have constructed a motor racing circuit. The Zhuhai International Circuit was built in 1996 and is located at Jinding, near the border to Zhongshan. ZIC has held the BPR Global GT Endurance Series in 1996, the FIA GT Championship in 1997, 1999, 2004 and 2005. It hosted the championship's 2007 opening round on 24 and 25 March. ZIC had planned to host a round of the Champ Car World Series on 20 May 2007, but agreement

3500-484: Is the largest reference work based purely on character and its literary variants. The CC-CEDICT project (2010) contains 97,404 contemporary entries including idioms, technology terms, and names of political figures, businesses, and products. The 2009 version of the Webster's Digital Chinese Dictionary (WDCD), based on CC-CEDICT, contains over 84,000 entries. The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary,

3600-424: Is the only city on the western Pearl River Delta with natural deep-water ports. Zhuhai has two international seaports : Jiuzhou ( 九洲港 ) and Gaolan ( 高栏港 ). Gaolan Port is one of the leading ports in Guangdong province, while Jiuzhou Port focuses on heavy passenger sea transport. Chu Kong Passenger Transport operates a ferry service between Zhuhai's Jiuzhou Port, Hong Kong and Shekou Passenger Terminal , in

3700-546: Is undergoing a major redevelopment project, costing an excess of 60 billion RMB. This included the construction of dozens of office and residential towers (such as the China Merchants Tower ), a new cruise center replacing the old ferry terminal , a number of shopping malls around Sea World and the refurbishment of numerous older buildings. Line 2 of the city's metro ends in Chiwan , an area just west of Shekou, therefore

3800-496: Is used as an everyday language in Hong Kong and Macau . The designation of various Chinese branches remains controversial. Some linguists and most ordinary Chinese people consider all the spoken varieties as one single language, as speakers share a common national identity and a common written form. Others instead argue that it is inappropriate to refer to major branches of Chinese such as Mandarin, Wu, and so on as "dialects" because

3900-497: Is used in education, media, formal speech, and everyday life—though Mandarin is increasingly taught in schools due to the mainland's growing influence. Historically, the Chinese language has spread to its neighbors through a variety of means. Northern Vietnam was incorporated into the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) in 111 BCE, marking the beginning of a period of Chinese control that ran almost continuously for

4000-540: Is used in the Language Atlas of China (1987), distinguishes three further groups: Some varieties remain unclassified, including the Danzhou dialect on Hainan , Waxianghua spoken in western Hunan , and Shaozhou Tuhua spoken in northern Guangdong . Standard Chinese is the standard language of China (where it is called 普通话 ; pǔtōnghuà ) and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore (where it

4100-546: Is very close to downtown. Furthermore, technological resources are centralised in our zone; there is also a huge development in hi-tech industries led by the software and IC industries. The hi-tech zone is the showcase for Zhuhai's scientific development. Meizu is one high tech product headquartered in Zhuhai. Zhuhai Free Trade Zone (Zhuhai FTZ) was founded in 1996 with the State Council's approval, occupying 3 km (1.2 sq mi). A Zhuhai FTZ Administrative Committee

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4200-428: Is very complex, with a large number of consonants and vowels, but they are probably not all distinguished in any single dialect. Most linguists now believe it represents a diasystem encompassing 6th-century northern and southern standards for reading the classics. The complex relationship between spoken and written Chinese is an example of diglossia : as spoken, Chinese varieties have evolved at different rates, while

4300-735: The Qieyun rime dictionary (601 CE), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by rhyme tables such as the Yunjing constructed by ancient Chinese philologists as a guide to the Qieyun system. These works define phonological categories but with little hint of what sounds they represent. Linguists have identified these sounds by comparing the categories with pronunciations in modern varieties of Chinese , borrowed Chinese words in Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean, and transcription evidence. The resulting system

4400-525: The Korean , Japanese and Vietnamese languages, and today comprise over half of their vocabularies. This massive influx led to changes in the phonological structure of the languages, contributing to the development of moraic structure in Japanese and the disruption of vowel harmony in Korean. Borrowed Chinese morphemes have been used extensively in all these languages to coin compound words for new concepts, in

4500-680: The May Fourth Movement beginning in 1919. After the fall of the Northern Song dynasty and subsequent reign of the Jurchen Jin and Mongol Yuan dynasties in northern China, a common speech (now called Old Mandarin ) developed based on the dialects of the North China Plain around the capital. The 1324 Zhongyuan Yinyun was a dictionary that codified the rhyming conventions of new sanqu verse form in this language. Together with

4600-496: The Nanshan District of Shenzhen. A service between Jiuzhou Port and Hong Kong International Airport for air passengers using the airport began on 10 July 2007. Zhuhai is currently served by two major Chinese national expressways : [REDACTED] G94 Pearl River Delta Ring Expressway [REDACTED] G0425 Guangzhou–Macau Expressway Zhuhai and the surrounding landscapes were developed into an industrial output zone in

4700-579: The National Language Unification Commission finally settled on the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People's Republic founded in 1949 retained this standard but renamed it 普通话 ; 普通話 ; pǔtōnghuà ; 'common speech'. The national language is now used in education, the media, and formal situations in both mainland China and Taiwan. In Hong Kong and Macau , Cantonese is the dominant spoken language due to cultural influence from Guangdong immigrants and colonial-era policies, and

4800-643: The Pearl River estuary was transferred from Zhuhai to Shenzhen in 2009. Despite being located within the tropics, Zhuhai has a humid subtropical climate affected by the East Asian Monsoon (Koppen classification Cwa) and moderated by the South China Sea, with long, hot and humid summers with frequent thunderstorms, and short, mild and dry winters. Average highs in January and July are 18 and 32 °C (64 and 90 °F) respectively. Snowfalls are unknown and

4900-470: The Pearl River Delta . This trend has however abated after 2003, after the country's continued economic reforms. Development of other parts of the city and substantial increase in English levels of university graduates have made life in the city proper more acceptable to many foreigners without school-age children. In 2003, the local government, seeking to capitalize on the foreign flavor of the area, invested in

5000-473: The oracle bone inscriptions created during the Shang dynasty c.  1250 BCE . The phonetic categories of Old Chinese can be reconstructed from the rhymes of ancient poetry. During the Northern and Southern period , Middle Chinese went through several sound changes and split into several varieties following prolonged geographic and political separation. The Qieyun , a rime dictionary , recorded

5100-591: The phonology of Old Chinese by comparing later varieties of Chinese with the rhyming practice of the Classic of Poetry and the phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters. Although many of the finer details remain unclear, most scholars agree that Old Chinese differs from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless nasals and liquids. Most recent reconstructions also describe an atonal language with consonant clusters at

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5200-627: The 12-volume Hanyu Da Cidian , records more than 23,000 head Chinese characters and gives over 370,000 definitions. The 1999 revised Cihai , a multi-volume encyclopedic dictionary reference work, gives 122,836 vocabulary entry definitions under 19,485 Chinese characters, including proper names, phrases, and common zoological, geographical, sociological, scientific, and technical terms. The 2016 edition of Xiandai Hanyu Cidian , an authoritative one-volume dictionary on modern standard Chinese language as used in mainland China, has 13,000 head characters and defines 70,000 words. Zhuhai Zhuhai

5300-425: The 1980s. Prior to that, Zhuhai generated economic development on the basis of tourism, benefiting from the comfortable subtropical climate. Zhuhai enjoys the reputation of a coastal garden city. When environmental pollution from the manufacturing industries threatened the quality of life, Zhuhai introduced strict environmental laws and hired engineers from Singapore to assist the city with urban planning . Realizing

5400-639: The Chinese Central Government and economy to have easier access to the Macau and consequently, global market. As a result, Zhuhai is now a major city in the Pearl River Delta region according to the new general urban plan approved by the State Council . The implementation of Special Economy Zone intended for the city to become a key port city, science and education city, scenic and tourism city, and as

5500-555: The Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet . English words of Chinese origin include tea from Hokkien 茶 ( tê ), dim sum from Cantonese 點心 ( dim2 sam1 ), and kumquat from Cantonese 金橘 ( gam1 gwat1 ). The sinologist Jerry Norman has estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a dialect continuum , in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though

5600-607: The SEZ are eligible for a range of incentives provided by the PRC. Zhuhai became a city in 1979, a year before it was designated as one of the first Special Economic Zones of China (SEZ). Similarly to neighbouring Shenzhen , which became the first Special Economic Zone of China in 1978, the implementation of Zhuhai as an SEZ was largely due to its strategic position adjacent to Macau, a capitalist trading center similar to Shenzhen's position with Hong Kong. The establishment of Zhuhai as an SEZ allowed

5700-540: The Shekou Industrial Zone, developed solely by China Merchants Group of Hong Kong under Yuan Geng 's leadership, earlier than the formation of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone . The event is chronicled in the Chinese ballad "The Story of Spring (春天的故事)". China Merchants Group helped developed Shekou into a modern port city through (1) developing the industrial park, (2) building a port which

5800-916: The Upper Adriatic region to the hub of Trieste with its rail connections to Central and Eastern Europe . The area attracts many tourists and has a sizable community of resident foreigners, and many non-Chinese restaurants exist in the area. According to the Shenzhen Management and Service Center for Expats, 6,275 of the 43,919 registered expats living in Shenzhen are registered with the Shekou Police Station and Shenzhenwan Police Station alone. Primary and secondary schools for local Mainland Chinese students include: International primary and secondary schools in Shekou include: Supplementary schools: Shekou

5900-540: The benefits brought by tourism, the local government is expanding tourist destinations and is developing new spots such as Hengqin ( 横琴岛 ), Dong'ao ( 东澳 ), Hebao ( 荷包 ), Qi'ao ( 淇澳岛 ) and Yeli ( 野狸 ). Zhuhai hosts the China International Aviation & Aerospace Exhibition biannually in November. It is the largest Air Show in China and a huge tourist attraction. The New Yuan Ming Palace ( simplified Chinese : 圆明新园 ; traditional Chinese : 圓明新園 )

6000-553: The customs and immigration process is completed upon disembarking the ferry. Passengers taking ferries directly to Hong Kong International Airport can also check in for some flights at the terminal. Coming from Hong Kong International Airport, passengers can buy ferry tickets upon landing in Hong Kong, they do not need to go through customs in Hong Kong or collect their luggage. They can pick up their checked in luggage once arriving and going through customs in Shekou. The ferry runs throughout

6100-574: The day from 8.15AM - 9.50PM. There are also buses travelling from the terminal to the Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport . The Shekou container port is part of the large port complex of Shenzhen. Shekou port is one of the main fruit import cities in south China. The port is part of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road that runs from the Chinese coast via the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean, there to

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6200-399: The different spoken dialects varies, but in general, there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more polysyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which

6300-484: The difficulties involved in determining the difference between language and dialect, other terms have been proposed. These include topolect , lect , vernacular , regional , and variety . Syllables in the Chinese languages have some unique characteristics. They are tightly related to the morphology and also to the characters of the writing system, and phonologically they are structured according to fixed rules. The structure of each syllable consists of

6400-473: The end of 2023. This bridge was first proposed by Gordon Wu and contemplated by stakeholders , municipal governments in the Pearl River Delta , the provincial government of Guangdong , and the central government of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Before the government handover of Hong Kong, the British government also considered plans for a bridge. After 1997 the commercial interests of Hong Kong prompted

6500-566: The end of the syllable, developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese. Several derivational affixes have also been identified, but the language lacks inflection , and indicated grammatical relationships using word order and grammatical particles . Middle Chinese was the language used during Northern and Southern dynasties and the Sui , Tang , and Song dynasties (6th–10th centuries CE). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by

6600-415: The existing industrial base as well as to provide a better environment for the development of new high-tech industries, the local government has taken the initiative in developing five economic zones: As one of the four earliest Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in China, Zhuhai SEZ was set up in the year 1980 and granted with a local legislative right. Zhuhai hi-tech zone is located in the north of Zhuhai, which

6700-413: The first one, 十 , normally appears in monosyllabic form in spoken Mandarin; the rest are normally used in the polysyllabic forms of respectively. In each, the homophone was disambiguated by the addition of another morpheme, typically either a near-synonym or some sort of generic word (e.g. 'head', 'thing'), the purpose of which is to indicate which of the possible meanings of the other, homophonic syllable

6800-469: The first permanent motor racing facility in China and has become a centre for the local racing scene, as well as a semi-regular fixture on the international racing circuit, including the Zhuhai Special Economic Zone . The population of Zhuhai has experienced steady growth from 2014 to 2023. In 2014, the city's population was approximately 1.51 million, which increased to about 2.49 million by

6900-491: The form of a word), to indicate a word's function within a sentence. In other words, Chinese has very few grammatical inflections —it possesses no tenses , no voices , no grammatical number , and only a few articles . They make heavy use of grammatical particles to indicate aspect and mood . In Mandarin, this involves the use of particles such as 了 ; le ; ' PFV ', 还 ; 還 ; hái ; 'still', and 已经 ; 已經 ; yǐjīng ; 'already'. Chinese has

7000-550: The government of the People's Republic of China, with Singapore officially adopting them in 1976. Traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and among Chinese-speaking communities overseas . Linguists classify all varieties of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family , together with Burmese , Tibetan and many other languages spoken in the Himalayas and the Southeast Asian Massif . Although

7100-414: The investment policy is to integrate Macao with key industries in the Pearl River Delta . Zhuhai manufactured and supplied 70 per cent of the world's ribbons, 60 per cent of the world's aftermarket inkjet cartridges and 20 per cent of the world's third-party laser toner cartridges. Their combined sales were worth more than 1.3 billion US dollars or 10 per cent of all the sales in the world. Zhuhai owns

7200-581: The language of administration and scholarship, a position it would retain until the late 19th century in Korea and (to a lesser extent) Japan, and the early 20th century in Vietnam. Scholars from different lands could communicate, albeit only in writing, using Literary Chinese. Although they used Chinese solely for written communication, each country had its own tradition of reading texts aloud using what are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations . Chinese words with these pronunciations were also extensively imported into

7300-516: The late 19th century. Today Japanese is written with a composite script using both Chinese characters called kanji , and kana. Korean is written exclusively with hangul in North Korea, although knowledge of the supplementary Chinese characters called hanja is still required, and hanja are increasingly rarely used in South Korea. As a result of its historical colonization by France, Vietnamese now uses

7400-561: The line is also known as the Shekou line . Stations geographically located in Shekou include, among others Sea World and Shekou Port . Line 12 is a new line which will go to the east of Nanshan. It connects with the Shekou line at Chiwan. Shekou Cruise Center , which replaced the Shekou Port Ferry Terminal , offers regular ferry services to and from Hong Kong , Macau and Zhuhai . In regards to ferries from Hong Kong and Macau,

7500-562: The local government to consider the plans as well. On 24 October 2018 the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge (HZMB) was opened. Zhuhai borders the Macau Special Administrative Region (north and west), and is 140 kilometres (87 miles) southwest of Guangzhou . Its territory has 690 kilometres (429 miles) of coastline and 217 islands, of which 147 are over 500 square metres in area. The islands within

7600-456: The main part of Guangzhou, and small parts of Jiangmen and Huizhou cities but with Hong Kong not quite conurbated yet. According to a report released in 2014 by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences , Zhuhai is the most liveable city in China. Zhuhai is classified as a Medium-Port Metropolis. Zhuhai has had a long history in the development of the exhibition industry in China. Zhuhai was

7700-455: The more conservative modern varieties, usually found in the south, have largely monosyllabic words , especially with basic vocabulary. However, most nouns, adjectives, and verbs in modern Mandarin are disyllabic. A significant cause of this is phonetic erosion : sound changes over time have steadily reduced the number of possible syllables in the language's inventory. In modern Mandarin, there are only around 1,200 possible syllables, including

7800-425: The mutual unintelligibility between them is too great. However, calling major Chinese branches "languages" would also be wrong under the same criterion, since a branch such as Wu, itself contains many mutually unintelligible varieties, and could not be properly called a single language. There are also viewpoints pointing out that linguists often ignore mutual intelligibility when varieties share intelligibility with

7900-583: The nasal sonorant consonants /m/ and /ŋ/ can stand alone as their own syllable. In Mandarin much more than in other spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda (assuming that a final glide is not analyzed as a coda), but syllables that do have codas are restricted to nasals /m/ , /n/ , /ŋ/ , the retroflex approximant /ɻ/ , and voiceless stops /p/ , /t/ , /k/ , or /ʔ/ . Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as Standard Chinese, are limited to only /n/ , /ŋ/ , and /ɻ/ . The number of sounds in

8000-463: The north and Macau to the southeast, and shares maritime boundaries with Shenzhen and Hong Kong to the northeast across the estuary. Zhuhai was one of the original four Special Economic Zones established in 1980, as well as one of China's premier tourist destinations, being called the Chinese Riviera . While the city is located in the traditionally Cantonese -speaking province of Guangdong,

8100-538: The other varieties within the same branch (e.g. Southern Min). There are, however, transitional areas where varieties from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility, including New Xiang with Southwestern Mandarin , Xuanzhou Wu Chinese with Lower Yangtze Mandarin , Jin with Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan . All varieties of Chinese are tonal at least to some degree, and are largely analytic . The earliest attested written Chinese consists of

8200-475: The planning stage. Line 1 will start from Jiuzhou Port and end at the Jinwan Station, with a total length of 36.8 km; Line 2 will start from Jinding Industrial Area and end at Gongbei Port, with a total length of 30.5 km. Construction was expected to start in 2019, with an estimated time of completion in 2024. Zhuhai is known for its good climate and good air quality. Endowed with a long coastline, it

8300-474: The prefecture-level city of Zhuhai include a number of near-shore islands, often connected to the mainland by bridges or causeways (such as Hengqin , Qi'ao , or Yeli Islands), as well as some islands in the open South China Sea (the Wanshan Archipelago ). Some of the latter are actually geographically closer to Hong Kong than to the Zhuhai mainland. The jurisdiction of Nei Lingding Island , located in

8400-404: The rate of change varies immensely. Generally, mountainous South China exhibits more linguistic diversity than the North China Plain . Until the late 20th century, Chinese emigrants to Southeast Asia and North America came from southeast coastal areas, where Min, Hakka, and Yue dialects were spoken. Specifically, most Chinese immigrants to North America until the mid-20th century spoke Taishanese ,

8500-552: The related subject dropping . Although the grammars of the spoken varieties share many traits, they do possess differences. The entire Chinese character corpus since antiquity comprises well over 50,000 characters, of which only roughly 10,000 are in use and only about 3,000 are frequently used in Chinese media and newspapers. However, Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words. Because most Chinese words are made up of two or more characters, there are many more Chinese words than characters. A more accurate equivalent for

8600-509: The relationship was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted, reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan is much less developed than that of families such as Indo-European or Austroasiatic . Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, and the effects of language contact. In addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach and are often also sensitive border zones. Without

8700-505: The six official languages of the United Nations . Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin and was first officially adopted in the 1930s. The language is written primarily using a logography of Chinese characters , largely shared by readers who may otherwise speak mutually unintelligible varieties. Since the 1950s, the use of simplified characters has been promoted by

8800-557: The slightly later Menggu Ziyun , this dictionary describes a language with many of the features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects. Up to the early 20th century, most Chinese people only spoke their local variety. Thus, as a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties , known as 官话 ; 官話 ; Guānhuà ; 'language of officials'. For most of this period, this language

8900-424: The statue up close from a boardwalk on the shore. The statue was based on a local legend, in which the daughter of the celestial Dragon King visited the Pearl River delta , became a fisherwoman, and married a mortal. A number of other colleges and universities are also located in or near Zhuhai. Beijing Normal University Zhuhai Campus was created as a new model university. Besides its high quality of education, it

9000-559: The tonal distinctions, compared with about 5,000 in Vietnamese (still a largely monosyllabic language), and over 8,000 in English. Most modern varieties tend to form new words through polysyllabic compounds . In some cases, monosyllabic words have become disyllabic formed from different characters without the use of compounding, as in 窟窿 ; kūlong from 孔 ; kǒng ; this is especially common in Jin varieties. This phonological collapse has led to

9100-547: The traditional Western notion of a word. A Chinese cí can consist of more than one character–morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more. Examples of Chinese words of more than two syllables include 汉堡包 ; 漢堡包 ; hànbǎobāo ; 'hamburger', 守门员 ; 守門員 ; shǒuményuán ; 'goalkeeper', and 电子邮件 ; 電子郵件 ; diànzǐyóujiàn ; 'e-mail'. All varieties of modern Chinese are analytic languages : they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure), rather than inflectional morphology (changes in

9200-512: The use of tones in Chinese is the application of the four tones of Standard Chinese, along with the neutral tone, to the syllable ma . The tones are exemplified by the following five Chinese words: In contrast, Standard Cantonese has six tones. Historically, finals that end in a stop consonant were considered to be " checked tones " and thus counted separately for a total of nine tones. However, they are considered to be duplicates in modern linguistics and are no longer counted as such: Chinese

9300-409: The whole project will be completed in 2024. It will take only 30 minutes to commute from urban district to the airport using the completed line. Zhuhai also has a tram network , with the first phase of Line 1 completed in 2014. In 2017, Line 1 began service to the public. The trams ceased running in January 2021 due to frequent power issues and low patronage. The Zhuhai Metro ( 珠海地铁 ) is currently in

9400-452: The words in newspapers, and 60% of the words in science magazines. Vietnam, Korea, and Japan each developed writing systems for their own languages, initially based on Chinese characters , but later replaced with the hangul alphabet for Korean and supplemented with kana syllabaries for Japanese, while Vietnamese continued to be written with the complex chữ Nôm script. However, these were limited to popular literature until

9500-508: The written language used throughout China changed comparatively little, crystallizing into a prestige form known as Classical or Literary Chinese . Literature written distinctly in the Classical form began to emerge during the Spring and Autumn period . Its use in writing remained nearly universal until the late 19th century, culminating with the widespread adoption of written vernacular Chinese with

9600-453: Was a koiné based on dialects spoken in the Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect. By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with the imperial court. In the 1930s, a standard national language ( 国语 ; 國語 ; Guóyǔ ), was adopted. After much dispute between proponents of northern and southern dialects and an abortive attempt at an artificial pronunciation,

9700-739: Was chosen as the location for China's first Management and Service Center for Expats. The new facilities provide an information center for locals as well as a place where foreigners can get assistance from very friendly English-speaking staff. The types of assistance they offer include registration services for expats living in the area so foreigners no longer need to go to the police station, advice on marriage or disputes with landlords and employers, guidelines on leases, traveling, currency exchange and more. Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing')

9800-481: Was hidden by their written form. Often different compounds for the same concept were in circulation for some time before a winner emerged, and sometimes the final choice differed between countries. The proportion of vocabulary of Chinese origin thus tends to be greater in technical, abstract, or formal language. For example, in Japan, Sino-Japanese words account for about 35% of the words in entertainment magazines, over half

9900-466: Was highly accessible to the village, and (3) building urban residences. China Merchants Group developed a reputation for this approach to development, which is called the Port-Park-City model or the Shekou model. Since the 1980s, after foreign oil majors such as Agip , Chevron , Texaco , Statoil and Shell obtained concessions for oil exploration in the South China Sea , Shekou started serving as

10000-687: Was set up in June 1997. By the end of 2006 there had been over 200 companies registered in the Free Trade Zone, including more than 150 foreign-funded enterprises, and the total investment amount was one billion US dollars.Industries encouraged in the zone include electronics assembly and manufacturing, telecommunications equipment, building/construction materials, instruments and industrial equipment production, medical equipment and supplies, raw material processing, research and development , shipping/warehousing/logistics, and heavy industry. The Wanshan archipelago

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