Beijing cribs - anatomy of a Chinese address, or how to write an address in Mandarin
Posted by Jonah Lopin on Sun, Mar 22, 2009 @ 09:51 PM
In America, you might live at
123 any street, apt. 2
city, STATE, zip.
That's nice.
But in China your address would look a little different.
Here's the address where I lived in Beijing in the early 2000s:
北 京 市 朝 阳 区 朝 阳 公 园 西 小 区
1 号 楼 四 单 元 602 号
骆 晨 南 收
The first two characters, obviously, are Bei3jing1. Then you have shi4, which means city. So, city of Beijing. So far, so good.
Next, you have the district, which is chao2 yang2 district. The word for district is qu1 (区). So 朝 阳 区 means chao2yang2 district.
The next 7 characters start to get a little crazy. The characters are chao2 yang2 (朝 阳) gong1 yuan2 (公 园 = park) xi1 xiao3 men2 (西 小 区 = western little district).
Ok, so in total the first line of my address was:
Beijing city, chao yang district, chao yang park west little district.
The second line has 3 parts. First, the building number. 1 号 楼 is pronounced yi1 hao4 lou2. Lou2 means building. Hao4 basically means "number".
Next, you get the 单 元 (dan1 yuan2), which means doorway. I lived in the 4th doorway. I never really figured out what that meant.
Finally, the second line ends with the apartment number, which was 602, followed once again by hao4 (="number").
The 3rd line was just my name in Chinese, 骆 晨 南, followed by 收, pronounced xing4, which means last name.
I usually found my way home, and I sometimes got mail, but not often.