Mandarin is the "official spoken language of the People's Republic of China, Republic of China (Taiwan) and Singapore, and is also widely used overseas Chinese". With over 1.3 billion Chinese worldwide, how do they all communicate effectively? How does the Chinese do business with their own country-mates? How do families from across China communicate? How do they expand their products across China? It only narrows down to one official language, Mandarin (aka Putonghua, Standard Mandarin Chinese).

Beijing, being the capital of mainland China, is also known for being the political, cultural and educational centre of China. Beijing attracts a vast amount of foreigners to come to learn Mandarin every year. With the Olympics coming up this summer of 2008, there is no other reason why one should not come and study Mandarin in Beijing.

There are many tourist attractions in Beijing. China has an outstanding 5000 ancient years of history, and Beijing is the city where most imperials and emperors chose as their fortress. Some famous attractions include:

• Tian'an men Square: walk through the "Gate of the Nation" and home of the imperial ministries, and learn about the history of the Tian'an men Square protests in 1989, May Fourth movement of 1919, Tian'an men Square self-immolation incident of 2001.
• Forbidden City: walk through the largest grand imperial palace of the Ming and Qing dynasties where 24 emperors lived and ruled here, in China. Started building in 1406, and it took 14 years to finish building. Although after so many years, Forbidden City was renovated many times, but they maintained the original architectural style.
• Great Wall of China: the wall was built to protect the northern borders of the Chinese emperors during consecutive dynasties. The Great Wall is the longest human-made structure of the world, and 2-3 million Chinese has died whilst building the wall back then. The wall is approximately 6,500 km long, stretching from east of Shanhaiguan to west of Lop Nur, and defines the southern edge of Inner Mongolia.
• Summer Palace: In 1960, the State Council designated Summer Palace (Yiheyuan) to be a Key Cultural Relics Protection Site of China. It is China's largest and most well-preserved imperial garden. Walk through this beautiful imperial garden, and relax just like how the imperial rulers did.