How to learn the Chinese cities names

First thing is to understand that many Chinese cities have a two-character name (sometimes 3 and rarely 4), and it is always one syllable per character. To ace the Chinese city quizzes (or world city quizzes), it would help if you know how to identify the characters. In this article, I will break them apart to make it easier to understand.

Let's start with the easiest ones first. The capital Bei Jing is made up of two characters, Bei and Jing. It literally means "northern capital", so you can easily derive that Bei = north and Jing = capital. In fact, learning the four directions in Mandarin can help a lot:

Bei = North

Nan = South

Dong = East

Xi = West

With that, you can name the former capital Nan Jing ("southern capital"), now the capital of the Jiang Su province. Another major city you can name would be Xi An, literally "western peace". It was formerly called Chang An ("eternal peace"), one of the ancient capitals of Chinese dynasties, the start of the Silk Road, and where the Terracotta Warriors can be found. It is now the capital of the Shaan Xi province.

There are many other cities with direction in their names, such as Ji Nan ("south of Ji river", the capital of Shan Dong), Nan Chang ("southern prosperity", capital of Jiang Xi), Nan Ning ("southern tranquillity", capital of Guang Xi), Xi Ning ("western tranquillity", capital of Qing Hai), Dong Guan (a manufacturing hub in Guang Dong Pearl River Delta, sometimes considered as part of Guang Zhou metro, such as in citypopulation.de).

Then there are smaller cities with direction in their names. To begin, there is Huai River in eastern China. With that, you can then name 3 cities, Huai Bei ("north of Huai"), Huai Nan ("south of Huai"), and Huai An ("Huai peace", An being same character as in Xi An). There are few more cities starting with Nan, such as one near Shang Hai called Nan Tong ("south connect"), a city in Si Chuan called Nan Chong ("south sufficient"), a city in He Nan called Nan Yang ("south positive", Yang as in yin and yang - see later section).

You'd probably notice that many Chinese cities end with Zhou ("prefecture or state"). Major cities named Zhou include Guang Zhou (capital of Guang Dong), Hang Zhou (capital of Zhe Jiang), Zheng Zhou (capital of He Nan), Fu Zhou (capital of Fu Jian), Lan Zhou (capital of Gan Su), Su Zhou (in Jiang Su, sometimes considered part of Shang Hai metro), Wen Zhou (in Zhe Jiang). 

Then there are smaller cities such as Hui Zhou (in Guang Dong), Yang Zhou, Chang Zhou and Xu Zhou (all in Jiang Su), Quan Zhou (in Fu Jian, sometimes considered part of Xia Men), Tai Zhou (in Zhe Jiang). Tai is the same character as in Taiwan, while there's another smaller Tai Zhou in Jiang Su, whereby Tai is the same character as in Thailand. The two Tai have different tones in Mandarin.

If this is not enough, there are many more smaller cities such as Liu Zhou (in Guang Xi), Jing Zhou (in Hu Bei), Zhu Zhou (in Hu Nan), Gan Zhou (in Jiang Xi), Teng Zhou (in Shan Dong), Zhang Zhou (in Fu Jian), another Su Zhou (in An Hui), another Fu Zhou (in Jiang Xi) etc., many which an average Chinese person may not have heard of.

Many characters are commonly used in names. Let's go through some useful ones: 

Hai ("sea")

From Shang Hai ("upon the sea“), you have Hai Kou ("sea mouth", capital of Hai Nan or "sea south" province/island), Zhu Hai ("pearl sea", at the mouth of Pearl River just north of Macau) and Wei Hai (at the tip of the Shan Dong peninsula, the former British colony of Port Edward)

Yang ("positive"), opposite to Yin ("negative")

Generally, cities on the northern bank of a river is called Yang and on the south is called Yin. Therefore there are many cities ending in Yang or Yin, such as Shen Yang (capital of Liao Ning), Gui Yang (capital of Gui Zhou), Luo Yang (another ancient capital of China in He Nan, to where emperors usually fled when Chang An was invaded). Then there are less famous cities such as An Yang (the first stable capital in ancient China also in He Nan), Jie Yang and Chao Yang (in eastern Guang Dong, sometimes considered part of Shan Tou), Heng Yang and Yue Yang (in Hu Nan), Mian Yang (in Si Chuan), Xiang Yang (in Hu Bei) etc. Conversely there is a city called Jiang Yin (in Jiang Su).

Chang ("long", or "eternal" to be more elegant)

I talked about the ancient capital of Chang An ("eternal peace", now Xi An) above. There are two more major cities starting with Chang, namely Chang Sha ("long sand", capital of Hu Nan) and Chang Chun ("long spring", capital of Ji Lin). Note that Ji Lin is the only Chinese city that shares its name with its province.

Shan ("mountain")

These are smaller cities: Zhong Shan ("central mountain", in Guang Dong Pearl River Delta), the birthplace of the father of China Dr Sun Yat-sen, who is commonly known as Sun Zhong Shan in Chinese; Fo Shan ("Buddha's mountain"), right next to Guang Zhou and now commonly considered as part of the agglomeration; An Shan (in Liao Ning) and Ma An Shan (in An Hui), both meaning "saddle mountain"; Tang Shan (in He Bei), mostly known for the deadly earthquake in 1976.

So far I have introduced over 50 Chinese cities, but there are few big ones not mentioned yet.

Tian Jin, literally "heavenly ford", a port city next to Bei Jing

Cheng Du, literally "becoming metropolis", the capital of Si Chuan, famous for its pandas and more recently the gay capital of China

Chong Qing, literally "double celebration", the wartime capital during WW2, famous for its hilly streets, skyscrapers and spicy hot pot

Shen Zhen, just across the river north of Hong Kong, is now the Silicon Valley and economic powerhouse of China

Wu Han, everyone in the world know this city by now unfortunately. But it was also where the Chinese revolution broke out in 1911 which ended thousand years of imperial rules.

Qing Dao, literally "green island", the former German colony famous for its Tsingtao Beer

Da Lian, at the tip of the Liao Dong peninsula, founded by the Russian and ceded to Japan after the Russo-Japanese War

There are still many more Chinese cities I have not mentioned but this is becoming too overwhelming. I hope this is useful to many of you. Good luck with the many city quizzes in JetPunk.