实用应急汉语
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.
全部
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.
- Study & administration
Registering at the University
Everything you have to say to get from the front door of the admissions building to a room key: announcing yourself, handing over documents, filling in forms you cannot fully read, paying, and finding out what is still left to do.
13 必备表达
- Arrival & transport
Arriving at the Airport
From the passport queue to the taxi rank: stating why you have come, collecting your luggage, changing money, buying a SIM card and getting yourself into the city without a common language.
13 必备表达
- Health
At the Pharmacy and the Hospital
How to get seen and get treated: registering at the 挂号 desk, naming a department, describing symptoms clearly, declaring an allergy, understanding the dosage and asking for the receipt your insurer will want.
13 必备表达
- Arrival & transport
Taxis, Buses and the Metro
Crossing a Chinese city on your own: getting into a metered taxi or a car you booked on your phone, telling the driver where to turn and where to stop, working out a bus route, changing metro lines, and buying a train ticket.
13 必备表达
- Study & administration
Moving into the Student Dormitory
The building you will live in and the person at the desk who runs it: checking in and paying the deposit, getting a card that opens the door, reporting the things that break, paying for electricity, collecting parcels and signing a friend in.
13 必备表达
- Eating & shopping
Eating Out
Sitting down, working out how to order when the menu is a QR code, saying what you do not eat, asking for a dish to be less spicy, getting an extra pair of chopsticks, taking the leftovers home and paying.
13 必备表达
- Eating & shopping
Shopping and Markets
Buying fruit by the jin, asking the price, haggling where haggling is expected, trying clothes on, asking whether you can bring something back, and paying by phone or in cash.
13 必备表达
- Banking
Opening an Account at the Bank
The morning that makes everything else possible: taking a queue number, opening an account with your passport, setting a PIN, linking the card to your payment apps, receiving money from home, and knowing what to say when a machine swallows your card.
13 必备表达
- Police
Police and Emergencies
The sentences you hope not to need: calling for help, saying where you are, reporting a theft or a lost passport, describing an accident, and asking for the paper the police give you afterwards.
13 必备表达
- Mobile
Getting a Phone Number and Going Online
The errand that unlocks the rest of the country: buying a SIM card in your own name, choosing a plan, understanding data and top-ups, getting online in the dormitory, and closing the number down before you fly home.
13 必备表达
- Social
Making Friends
Turning a classmate into a friend: introducing yourself, saying where you are from, swapping WeChat, finding out what someone likes, making a plan for the weekend, declining a drink gracefully and offering a language exchange.
13 必备表达
- Classroom
In the Classroom
Speaking up in your own language class: asking how a character is read and written, asking why a sentence uses 了, admitting you are lost, apologising for being late, asking for leave, and finding out what the homework is.
13 必备表达
- Post office
The Post Office and Your Parcels
Sending a box home, declaring what is inside it, and — far more often — collecting the parcels that arrive for you: the pickup station, the locker code, the courier who telephones from the gate.
13 必备表达
- Sim card
Buying a SIM Card and Choosing a Data Plan
The counter conversation in detail: which carrier, which plan, how much data, when it resets, what happens when it runs out, and how to change or cancel it later without a surprise.
13 必备表达
- Dentist
Seeing a Dentist
Toothache is the emergency nobody prepares for. Registering at the dental department, describing the pain precisely enough to be useful, understanding what is being proposed, and asking what it costs before it starts.
14 必备表达
- Sport
The Gym and Playing Sport
Joining a gym without signing away a year, using the equipment on campus, booking a badminton court, and the handful of sentences that turn exercise into a way of meeting people.
14 必备表达
- Haircut
Getting a Haircut
Twenty minutes in a chair with someone holding scissors and no shared vocabulary. How to say what you want, how to stop it going too far, and how to decline the membership card without an argument.
13 必备表达
- Job interview
The Basics of a Job Interview
The first Chinese-language interview: announcing yourself at reception, the ninety seconds of self-introduction that always come first, describing what you have done, and the questions you should be asking back.
14 必备表达
- Renting
Renting a Flat
Moving out of the dormitory: viewing a place, understanding what the deposit formula actually means, what the agency charges, what is in the contract, and the police registration nobody mentions until it is late.
14 必备表达
- Transport cards
Transport Cards and Getting Through the Gate
Metro and bus without a physical ticket: getting a card or a QR code, topping it up, tapping in and out, transferring, and what to do when the gate refuses to open.
14 必备表达
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
文化提示
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.