Eva Chin writes for RECATOOLS on business and commerce in Southeast Asia: the commercial decisions small businesses actually face, and the markets and regulation around them. She also covers Chinese naming and cultural practice, education and qualifications across the region, and the arithmetic of a tropical home. Coverage of cultural practice is educational — it explains what a tradition holds and where it came from, and does not make predictive claims.

194
Articles
Business
Primary beat
Jul 2026
Writing since
~1230 min
Total reading
All 194 Business 125 Chinese Culture 46 Home & Living 23

Articles Showing 1–10 of 194

A porcelain vase painted with carp swimming among waves, against a plain grey background.
Home & Living

Most Chinese rebus puns the Palace Museum records also work in Cantonese

A Chinese rebus motif stands for a word by sound, as a bat painted for fortune does. We checked the 21 character pairs behind the Palace Museum's rebus motifs against Unihan and a CUHK Cantonese dictionary: 16 match exactly in Mandarin, and 13 or 14 in Cantonese, depending on how the magpie is read.

4 Nov 2026 · 6 min read
Clusters of small red lanterns with tassels hanging as New Year decorations.
Chinese Culture

Chinese New Year greetings as Cantonese, Hokkien and Mandarin dictionaries record them

恭喜發財 is a four-character New Year wish read differently in Mandarin and Cantonese, and Taiwan's Hokkien dictionary lists its two words but not the phrase. Dictionaries also record phrases tied to a place, such as 新年進步 in Hong Kong Cantonese and the 捞起 shout at a Singapore yusheng toss.

4 Nov 2026 · 6 min read
Painted hanging scrolls lining the walls of a dim gallery.
Home & Living

Most Chinese proverbs we could read in their source books are worded differently there

A Chinese proverb is a short everyday saying, and a few began as lines in classical books such as the Analects. We checked 160 sayings on one list against named sources, and six of the ten we could read in the original are worded differently there.

4 Nov 2026 · 6 min read
A hand turning the thin pages of a thick dictionary lying open on a wooden desk.
Chinese Culture

Few Chinese synonyms are exact, and Taiwan's dictionary often files them by sense

Taiwan's Ministry of Education dictionary says perfect synonyms are very rare and that most pairs differ in degree, colour or style. It often lists a word's synonyms under one numbered sense, and when a reviewer checked 23 doubtful pairs against its definitions, 13 of the doubts were overturned or weakened.

4 Nov 2026 · 6 min read
Four gold Chinese characters on a carved signboard above a red temple gateway, with a smaller board and lanterns below.
Chinese Culture

Most HSK words are two characters, and modifier-head compounds lead our hand-sorted sample

Chinese grammar textbooks sort two-character words by how the characters relate, such as one modifying the other or two equals side by side. We sorted 100 words from the HSK 3.0 syllabus by type and checked how a neutral tone marks a suffix.

4 Nov 2026 · 5 min read
A row of glowing red lanterns hanging under tiled eaves in front of a red wall with a lattice window.
Chinese Culture

Chinese calendar stems and branches disagree on the month far more than on the year

Stems and branches are the sixty paired names the Chinese calendar gives to years, months, days and hours, and each level changes at its own moment. Between 1901 and 2100 the two year rules give different pairs on about 2% of days, while solar-term and lunar months disagree on nearly a quarter.

3 Nov 2026 · 6 min read
A hand in a red sleeve writing Chinese characters with a brush on a practice sheet, beside a tray of inkstones and brushes.
Chinese Culture

Many Chinese tongue twisters lose their sound contrast when read in Cantonese

A Chinese tongue twister is built from sounds that are easy to confuse, but the confusion belongs to one language. Read in Cantonese, a 35-card Mandarin deck loses most of its sh and s contrast, and the h and f of the 化肥 card largely become one sound.

3 Nov 2026 · 6 min read
Red paper couplets brushed with Chinese characters, hanging side by side
Chinese Culture

The same Chinese number changes its characters with its job

Chinese numbers change form with their use: a count, a year and a money amount are written differently, and official texts on the mainland, in Taiwan and in Japan each set their own rules. Here is what those texts say about 两, 〇, 廿 and the capital numerals.

2 Nov 2026 · 5 min read
Chinese calligraphy brushes hanging from a rack beside ink sticks, an inkstone and porcelain brush pots
Home & Living

A mainland dictionary and Taiwan's draft table share about two-thirds of their common Chinese polyphones

Many Chinese characters have more than one reading, and mainland China and Taiwan rule on them in separate documents. Among common characters a 2013 mainland dictionary and Taiwan's 2012 draft share about two-thirds of their polyphones, while Taiwan's 1999 table stays in force.

1 Nov 2026 · 6 min read
Close-up of pale computer keyboard keys in blue light
Home & Living

Zhuyin typed in English mode decodes exactly to its symbols once the layout is known

When a Zhuyin input method is left in English mode, 你好 comes out as su3cl3. The standard and ET keyboard layouts read the same keys as different symbols, and a few keys in the garble show which one was used.

27 Oct 2026 · 6 min read
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