Town, Region and Country
Village, city, province, country - and the rule that reverses an English address, an English date and an English name, all with one idea: big first.
Revise this, the fun way
Play it interactively, earn XP and build a streak, free.
Start revising freeWhat you'll cover
Chinese starts with the big thing 🗺️
Write an English address and you start with the house number and work outwards to the country. Chinese does the opposite, and so does a Chinese date. **One rule covers both: the larger unit comes first.** It sounds like a formatting detail and it is not, because once you know it you can pick the city out of an address you cannot otherwise read.
From smallest to largest 🗂️
Six words for the places this topic is about, arranged the way Chinese thinks about them:
Match each word to its meaning
- 城市 (chéngshì)
- 村子 (cūnzi)
- 省 (shěng)
- 国家 (guójiā)
- city
- village
- province
- country
The envelope, reversed 📮
An English address goes outwards: number, street, town, county, country. **A Chinese address goes inwards.** Here is the shape, using an illustrative address rather than a real one: **中国 北京市 朝阳区 学院路 5号** country, then city, then district, then road, then number. **And it is not only addresses.** A date is written **year, month, day**: 2026年8月5日 is the 5th of August 2026. A Chinese name puts the family name before the given name, which you may already have met. **One rule, three places.** Larger before smaller, every time.
Which is a Chinese address? ❓
Which of these follows the order a Chinese address is written in?
- Country, city, district, road, house number
- House number, road, district, city, country
- City, house number, country, road
- Road, city, country, house number
Order the address 🪜
An interactive activity.
The same information, reversed ↔️
Read across. Nothing has changed except the direction of travel.
The rule 📝
In Chinese the _____ unit is written first. So an address begins with the _____ and ends with the house number, which is the _____ of the English order. The same rule applies to dates: the year comes first, then the _____, then the day. The word for a city is _____.
Find the country ✍️
An interactive activity.
Which follow the rule? ✅
Select the TWO that follow the big-before-small rule.
- An address beginning 中国 and ending with the house number
- A date written 2026年8月5日
- An address beginning with the house number and ending with 中国
- A date written 5日8月2026年
Use it 🧭
An interactive activity.
The summary 🖊️
A village is _____ and a city is _____. A province is _____ and a country is _____. And the rule that covers addresses, dates and names is the same one: the _____ unit always comes first.
Your turn ✍️
An interactive activity.