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Mandarin Pathways
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Lesson 15 of 15

Off to Beijing

Meet someone new, ask their age, and travel together by plane and taxi

What you'll learn

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Lesson phases

New words in this lesson

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Writing characters

Where these characters come from

A person carrying harvested grain — one harvest, one year.

A person standing with arms and legs stretched wide.

A foot stepping up out of a hollow: to go out.

A cart seen from above — axle and wheels.

A single tally stroke — the simplest possible count.

A bird's wings caught in motion.

Sentence patterns

How you travel: 坐 + vehicle + verb

Subject坐 + vehicleVerb phrase
坐飞机去北京。
我们坐出租车去饭店。
坐车回家。

The means of travel comes before the destination verb, not after it.

Tone pairs

Words whose second syllable is unstressed (neutral tone).

A third tone before another tone is a low dip, not a full fall-rise — it only rises when the syllable stands alone.

Radicals in this lesson