Travel and Tourist Transactions

At the ticket window

A tourist transaction is a short exchange with a stranger: you name what you want, you ask what it costs, and you find out where to go. Every word below is shown three ways: the characters, the pinyin with its tone marks in brackets, and the English. The grammar in this module is the one thing English speakers always get wrong when they start counting things in Chinese.

Travel words in Chinese

The nouns a traveller needs:

Match each word to its meaning

You cannot count without one

English does this occasionally: you do not say two breads, you say two slices of bread. Chinese does it every time. A number can never sit directly in front of a noun. • 一张票 (yī zhāng piào) one ticket. 张 is for flat things. • 一张地图 (yī zhāng dìtú) one map, also flat. • 一个房间 (yī gè fángjiān) one room. 个 is the general one, used when nothing better fits. • 一把钥匙 (yī bǎ yàoshi) one key. 把 is for things you hold by a handle. And one more thing that costs marks: use 两 (liǎng), not 二 (èr), before a measure word. Two tickets is 两张票, never 二张票.

How do you say two tickets?

You are at the window and you want two tickets. Which is right?

• 两张票 (liǎng zhāng piào)
• 二张票 (èr zhāng piào)
• 两票 (liǎng piào)
• 两个票 (liǎng gè piào)

Which are correct?

Select the TWO phrases that are written correctly.

• 一张地图 (yī zhāng dìtú)
• 一个房间 (yī gè fángjiān)
• 一地图 (yī dìtú)
• 二个房间 (èr gè fángjiān)

Making the request

Four expressions do most of the work in a transaction:

Complete the exchange

To open politely you say _____. To say you want two tickets you say _____ 两张票. To ask the price you say _____. And to ask where the station is you use _____.

Match each expression to when you would use it

在车站

You are at the station and need to get to the airport. Work through the transaction.

• You approach the ticket window. How do you open?
• You want two tickets. Which phrase is correct?
• You have your tickets and now need to find the airport. What do you ask?

Tickets and prices in Chinese

The Chinese for a ticket is _____ and for a station is _____. To ask a price you say _____. A number can never sit straight in front of a noun: you need a _____ in between, and before one you must use _____, not 二.

Buying the ticket, in your words

Write in English about buying a ticket for a journey, real or imagined. Say what you were buying, what you needed to ask, and what you would have to remember if you were doing it in Chinese.

• Say where you were going and what ticket you needed
• Give the two things you had to ask the person selling the ticket
• Explain, in your own words, why 一票 is not possible in Chinese
• Give the correct way to say two tickets, and say why it is not 二