274 Birthday

What do you do to celebrate your birthday? It just so happens that it was Charlie Hoff’s birthday a few days ago and she celebrated in style by going to see the musical “Hamilton” with her family in LA. If this is the American way to celebrate, how do people in China celebrate their birthdays? Well, ShaoLan suggests that nowadays many traditions such as having a birthday cake or going out for a meal are universal ways of celebrating, but she also tells Charlie about some interesting traditional ways that people in China used to celebrate their birthdays, which includes dyed red eggs! ShaoLan also teaches how to say “happy birthday” in Chinese, as well as many other useful birthday phrases and descriptions!

The way to say “birthday” in Chinese is 生日. The first character 生 means “to be born” and the second character 日 means “day” or “sun.” So this translates very literally as “birth day”, 生日.