The six sessions 🎯
The running case is Lumen Logistics, an invented Singapore freight company, 鲁门物流 (Lǔmén Wùliú, Lumen Logistics), opening a partnership with a Shanghai distributor. You are the person they send.
Register: the same sentence, three ways
Person, question form and company: the three levers that move a sentence from a colleague chat to a formal email, and written language versus speech.
✉️ Session 2 · coreFormal emails and WeChat
The blocks of a formal email, the shape of a business WeChat, subject lines, and why 此致 敬礼 (cǐzhì jìnglǐ, with respect) is a convention and not a standard.
🎛️ Session 3 · bench nightThe formality checker
One message written five ways, scored against three channels. Each draft fits one; three swaps fix a literal translation; polishing everything overshoots even email.
📊 Session 4 · advancedPresenting numbers
同比 (tóngbǐ, year on year) and 环比 (huánbǐ, period on period) as the statistics bureau defines them, growth, decline and share, and a result always said with its comparison.
⚖️ Session 5 · advancedNegotiation and face
Face as Graham and Lam describe it, reading an indirect no, and trading concessions toward a clear next step.
🥂 Session 6 · capstoneBusiness dining, and the capstone
Seating, toasts and polite refusal, then the full negotiation and both follow-ups, checked. Final scorecard.
Your passport 🎫
Clear all three quiz questions in a session and it gets stamped. Stamps live in this browser only.
What this is not, so you land in the right place 🧭
| If your question is | Go here instead |
|---|---|
| I am starting from zero | Business Chinese Basic ↗ |
| I want to present and influence in English | Communication ↗ |
| I speak everyday Chinese and need it to work in emails, meetings and negotiations. | you are in the right place |
Choose your path 🗺️
Three ways through the same six sessions.
What is honest here 🧾
Where a page rests on a standard, a paper or a guide, it says which and how it was read; where something is common practice rather than a documented rule, it says that instead.
| Claim | Status |
|---|---|
| Every index and fit on the formality checker | Really computed in your browser from a printed list of 43 markers; the weights and channel bands are constructed and printed in full |
| 同比 (tóngbǐ, year on year) and 环比 (huánbǐ, period on period) | Read at source from China's National Bureau of Statistics |
| 此致 敬礼 (cǐzhì jìnglǐ, with respect) | A widely observed convention; it is not part of GB/T 9704 or any standard found |
| Face in negotiation | Graham and Lam, Harvard Business Review, 2003, taught as their argument; cultural generalisations are tendencies, not rules |
| BCT, the Business Chinese Test | From the official CTI brochure: BCT (A), BCT (B) and BCT (oral) |
| Lumen Logistics, the drafts and the negotiation | Invented for the running case |
The knowledge map 🧠
The whole course at a glance - hover a session to spotlight its concepts, click any node to jump in.