Ni hau! That's the world's most widely spoken form of "Hello"

palace
Originally uploaded by birdcage.

More people speak Mandarin Chinese than any other language, says About.com. And today the world is learning Mandarin to enhance their chances of doing business with the awesome Asians.
Chinese is a tone-based language. An example: the difference between the words and pronunciations of the numerals 4 and 6 are minuscule, says student Lily Wu.

Mandarin (in English the word implies high-born or high in quality) is the northern and the official language. There is also Cantonese Chinese, mostly spoken in the south. And there are many dialects.

Great cities of the People's Republic of China:
Beijing (Peking)
Shanghai (the most populous at 17 M)
Hong Kong (the richest city)
Neighbors:
Japan
Taiwan (the Republic of China)
Vietnam
India
China
Mongolia
Russia

- There is a considerable contrast between the European dragon and the Chinese dragon.
- Chinese people are top performers in both business and the arts. They think of themselves as the world's greatest culture. They're as ethnocentric as Americans.

Some 15 years ago the communist government limited their tight control of the economy. With a capitalistic freedom the Chinese have been accelerating their economy.

The WalMart business model has hastened the loss of manufacturing jobs from the US to China, I'd say.

The US has developed a Service economy, focusing on:
insurance
banking
education
medical
entertainment
law
high-tech business, as in eBay and Google.

The US Working Class timeline shows progression from a Chinese-like no-rights worker to one protected and enriched by the union system. Today the salaries and benefits demanded by unions have priced US workers out of general competition.