Reading Chinese Menus: Meta: Subject index

[kake]

Since I'm taking October off for research purposes, I thought now would be a good time to have a go at making a subject index of all my Chinese menu posts so far, to make it easier for people (including me) to find things. I'd welcome any comments and suggestions regarding ways of making this easier to use. Update, April 2011: I now have a dish index and a character index as well.

Meta (posts about these posts)

• On learning to read Chinese menus (first post!)
• Search box, and posts here that aren't about Chinese menus (how to search my posts, how to filter out posts that aren't about Chinese menus)
• Come in, sit down, have a cup of tea, and ask me a question (here's where to put any general feedback you have on this project)
• A year of Chinese menus (first anniversary post)
• More reasons to learn to read menus
• The point of all this

Subtypes of Chinese food

• 涼菜 — liáng cài — cold dishes
• Mix-and-match green vegetable dishes
• 火鍋 — huǒ guō — hotpot
• 點心 — diǎn xīn — dim sum

Regions of China

• Fujian/Fújiàn/福建
• Sichuan/Sìchuān/四川
• Xinjiang/شىنجاڭ/Xīnjiāng/新疆

Specific ingredients

• Chilli oil (辣椒油/là jiāo yóu)
• Cucumber (黃瓜/huáng guā)
• Glass noodles (粉絲/fěn sī)
• Greens
• Potatoes (土豆/tǔ dòu)
• Shiitake mushrooms (香菇/xiāng gū or 冬菇/dōng gū)
• Soy sauce (醬油/jiàng yóu or 豉油/chǐ yóu)

In the restaurant

• The restaurant cheat-sheet
• Putting a meal together (part 1: restaurants)

Mandarin Chinese basics

• Chinese characters and pinyin (an introduction to characters, pinyin, Mandarin vs. other Chinese languages, traditional vs. simplified characters)
• Characters:
  • Fonts and handwriting
  • Radicals
    • Different forms of radicals, and non-radical components
  • Strokes, stroke order, and handwriting recognition
  • Traditional vs. simplified characters
  • Variant characters, revisited
• Pinyin:
  • Tone marks on pinyin
• Pronunciation:
  • Pronunciation and tone changes (tone sandhi)
  • The multiple uses of "i"

Chinese culture

• The Chinese calendar
• More details on the Chinese calendar (guest post by shuripentu)
• Chinese New Year celebrations (linkspam)
• Cheung Chau bun festival
• Duanwu (Dragon Boat Festival)
• Mid-Autumn Festival (guest post by shuripentu)
• Numbers

Looking things up

• Individual characters:
  • Strokes, stroke order, and handwriting recognition (online handwriting recognition tools)
  • Typing in pinyin, and looking things up (searchable online dictionaries)
  • Radicals (looking things up by radical)
• Specific dishes:
  • Flowery menu descriptions (finding out what a dish actually is, if the name isn't descriptive)
  • Chinese food blogs (written in English) (a list of useful places to start searching for information)

Practising

• In general:
  • Keep on keeping on (the usefulness of daily practice)
• Reading:
  • "Lady, you gotta practise" (suggestions for finding practice material)
  • Learning and revision tools — Anki (also mentions Mnemosyne, brief intro to spaced repetition tools)
  • Vocabulary consolidation and expansion (also discusses Anki some more)
  • Fonts and handwriting
• Writing:
  • Strokes, stroke order, and handwriting recognition
  • Handwriting input and practice (Skritter, why writing is useful)

Computer-related stuff

• Pinyin input:
  • Typing in pinyin, and looking things up (OS X, Ubuntu Karmic)
  • Typing in pinyin, revisited (mainly OS X, links to info for other OSes)
  • Pinyin input on Android phones
• Handwriting input:
  • Handwriting input and practice (why I don't use handwriting input)
• Commandline tools and programming:
  • grep (grep, dets, and Regexp::Chinese::TradSimp)
• Encoding issues:
  • Variant characters, revisited (Unicode code points, language tags)

If you have any questions or corrections, please leave a comment (here's how) and let me know (or email me at kake@earth.li). See my introductory post to the Chinese menu project for what these posts are all about.

Comments

[kake]

Hurrah, glad you're finding it useful! Please feel free to comment on any posts that catch your eye — I'm as happy to get comments on old posts as on new ones.

[ein_myria]

Will do! :) Thanks for your efforts. :D