交通工具
Jiāotōng gōngjù — Getting Around
How students get to school, and how people get around a Chinese city. This unit also introduces 坐 and 骑 — because in Chinese you don’t “take” a bike, you straddle it.
Unit objectives
- Name seven kinds of transport
- Choose between 坐 and 骑 correctly
- Say 我坐公交车去学校。
- Ask a classmate how they get to school
Key vocabulary
公交车 汽车 自行车 火车 飞机 地铁 坐 骑
Two verbs for “ride,” decided by your legs
If you sit in it, 坐. If you sit astride it, 骑:
坐公交车 take the bus · 坐飞机 fly
骑自行车 ride a bike · 骑马 ride a horse
Children remember this instantly once it’s framed as a question about their legs.
How you get there
Seven ways to travel
Flashcards with audio. Notice how many end in 车 — the character for “vehicle” that shows up in nearly all of them.
Sit or straddle
Sorting every vehicle into the 坐 pile or the 骑 pile, with a lot of arguing about scooters.
Class transport survey
Asking everyone how they get to school, tallying it, and reporting the result in Chinese.
The bicycle kingdom, then and now
China was once called the bicycle kingdom — photographs from the 1980s show streets in Beijing filled kerb to kerb with cyclists and almost no cars. Cars and subways took over for a few decades, and then bicycles came back in a new form: app-unlocked shared bikes parked on pavements in enormous numbers. A child looking at a 1985 street photo and a 2025 one side by side gets a whole lesson in how fast a country can change, and the word 自行车 is the thread running through both.
Unit 8 progress check
A light, no-pressure way to see what’s sticking:
- Can your child name four kinds of transport?
- Do they use 骑 for a bike and 坐 for a bus?
- Can they say how they get to school?
Spotting 车 inside several words is a good sign — it means they’re ready for the radicals unit next.