The official language in China is Mandarin, and that is what most people here speak. There is also a local dialect called Pekingese that people native to Beijing speak to each other.
Mandarin is a pictographic language, meaning that it is made up of a series of characters (pictures), all of which have a certain sound and meaning associated with them. This makes the language especially difficult to learn because, unlike English, there is no way for you to figure out how to read or say a character if you've never seen it before! Thankfully, a system called, "pinyin" spells out the sounds phonetically, similar to how English works and tells you what tones to use. There are four tones for Chinese characters. These change the way the character is said, and its meaning entirely. It's a lot of keep track of when you're learning the language!
We can learn how to say "teacher" in Mandarin Chinese -
Pinyin: Lǎoshī
Chinese characters: 老师
China uses RMB. The current exchange rate is about 7RMB for $1.00 USD. The highest bill you can get in China is 100RMB (only about $14.00 USD). But most people in China don't use cash anymore, many of them use an app on their phones to pay for everything. It is very convenient!
