So I think I've finally made sense of it all.

The Ts in Tsing Tao is actually from an old system for writing Chinese called Wade-Giles, the same system responsible for writing Beijing as Peking. It is actually properly pronounced Ching Dow everywhere.

These days, the standard system for writing Mandarin with English letters is called Pinyin. That's the one that writes Beijing as Beijing.

Oversimplifying a bit, Pinyin is similar enough to English, except for:

• q is like ch
• zh is like ch
• x is like sh
• z is halfway between z and tz
• r is like a French j in the word azure
• vowels ending in n or ng sound weird like "or" in work
• for example, Yuan is said more like yoo-en or yoon
• so does i at the end of a word after some letters

And now I'm going to stop sweating the exact pronunciation and move on and start speaking some Chinese!

So far, the most useful words and phrases have been:

• Ní hăo (hello)
• Xìe xie (thank you)
• Zài jìan (goodbye)

• Duì (yes)
• Méi (no)

• Dōng (east)
• Xī (west)
• Bĕi (north)
• Nán (south)
• Zhōng (central)

• Rè (hot)
• Líang (cold)
• Là (spicy)
• Chá (tea)
• Kā Fēi (coffee)
• Pí (beer)
• Shuĭ (water)
• Rŭ (milk)

• Líng (zero)
• Yī (one)
• Èr (two)
• Sān (three)
• Sì (four)
• Wŭ (five)
• Lìu (six)
• Qī (seven)
• Bā (eight)
• Jiŭ (nine)
• Shí (ten)

The numerals including zero are particularly useful. No need to learn big numbers if you can do it one digit at a time (one seven three instead of one-hundred seventy-three).

There endeth the lesson!