Mandarin and Cantonese

China is a country with a large variety of local languages and dialects. For example, Cantonese is one of local dialects used in Canton (Guangdong) , a province located in South China coast and having a long tradition of international trade. More than a hundred years ago, the development of sea transportation made it possible for Canton people to immigrate to the States as well as other countries to make a better living. They continued to speak Cantonese after they settled down in other countries and their children were also educated with Cantonese. That's why many oversea Chinese can speak Cantonese but don't understand mandarin at all.

Mandarin, based on Beijing dialect, is the official speaking language in China. With the support from central government, Mandarin has gained national popularity in the past 50 years. Although many Chinese, especially those from south China, can not speak perfect or standard mandarin, there is no problem for them to effectively communicate with people from other parts of China.

Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese 

Prior to 1949, there is only traditional Chinese in writing Chinese. After China Communist Party taking over China, they launched a campaign to educate illiterate poor people. In order to make it easier for the illiterate to learn Chinese characters and also to improve the efficiency of writing, simplified Chinese characters were then created as a national project. For example, in traditional Chinese, "China" is written as 中國 and in simplified Chinese, it is written as 中国. You'll find the first character remains same in both simplifed Chinese and traditional Chinese, but the second character has been changed and looks much simpler in Simplified Chinese. These two systems of writing Chinese still share a large number of same characters, most are simple characters.

As this campaign was launched only in China mainland, traditional Chinese has continued to be used in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Oversea without any change. So if you are going to Hong Kong and Taiwan market, use only simplified Chinese. However, there is a significant transition in oversea Chinese communities in the recent decade as more and more people from China mainland moving into these communities. Simplified Chinese has been increasingly used in these areas and traditional Chinese is no longer a dominant one. Many Chinese in oversea Chinese communities that only provided traditional Chinese classes 10 years ago now offer both simplified and traditional Chinese classes, some even offer only simplified Chinese classes.