HSK Guide

Chinois de survie

Survival Chinese

The sentences you need in a real situation — at the registration desk, at the airport, at the pharmacy — with the context that makes each one land, and a phrase card you can print and carry.

You do not need to understand a pattern to use a sentence that contains it. Everything on these pages is meant to be borrowed whole, said today, and understood properly later — each phrase links back to the grammar and the words inside it when you are ready.

Jouer cette situation avec le tuteurGuide de prononciation

Tout

Choose the situation you are walking into

Each scenario carries the phrases in the order you will actually need them, a note on when to say each one, and the cultural detail that decides whether it works.

How to use a scenario

Learn six sentences, not sixty

A survival page is not a vocabulary list. It is a script for one errand.

  1. Read the whole page once, the day before

    You are not memorising. You are finding out what the conversation is going to be about and what you will be asked for.

  2. Pick the three you will certainly need

    Usually the opening line, the one that hands over a document or names what you want, and the one that asks what happens next.

  3. Play the audio until you can say them without reading

    A phrase you have to read off a screen arrives too late in a real queue.

  4. Print the phrase card

    Every scenario has a print-optimised card at the bottom of the page: Chinese, pinyin and your language, no interface around it. Print it or save it as a PDF — it works with no signal and a flat battery is the only thing that beats paper.

  5. Role-play it with the tutor

    The tutor plays the clerk, the pharmacist or the driver, stays at your level, and corrects you afterwards rather than mid-sentence.

Notes culturelles

Knowing the sentence is half of it. Whether you queue or approach the desk directly, whether you hand a document with one hand or two, whether 谢谢 is expected or excessive — that is the half that decides how the exchange goes. Every scenario carries these notes explicitly rather than leaving you to infer them.

What these pages avoid

  • No procedural or legal claims. What a university, a bank or a clinic requires changes by city and by year — the pages give you language, and tell you to confirm the procedure with the institution.
  • No invented formality. Phrases are written the way a helpful local would actually say them, not translated from a textbook of polite English.
  • No hidden grammar debt. Where a phrase contains a pattern you have not met, it is flagged as something to borrow now and study later.