China is one of the most visited countries in the world by tourists. It attracts for the most part with its diversity of landscape, virgin villages with their traditions and fascinating legends, and huge metropolitan areas in which nightlife is seething. In China, everyone will find something new and unusual for themselves. China is one of ancient civilizations, in this republic, architectural monuments that are more than tens of thousands of years old have been preserved to this day. Each sight of China carries a mystery and a centuries-old legend.

Traveling through the expanses of this extraordinary state, nothing will stop you from enjoying its beauties, except perhaps not knowing the Chinese language, but you can cope with this problem thanks to our Russian-Chinese phrase book, which you can download or print directly from the site. It contains topics that you may need while traveling.

Appeals

Common phrases

At customs

At the station

In transport

In hotel

Emergencies

Dates and times

Numerals

In the shop

Restaurant and cafe

Common phrases are words on which you can start a conversation and keep it going. Here are collected phrases that are most often used in the lexicon.

Airport - in order not to get lost at the Chinese airport, to find ticket offices, exit to the terminals, to the parking lot, to the bus stop, etc., this topic is perfect for you.

Transport - by opening this topic you will find the translation of words and phrases that can be used to explain to the taxi driver where you need to go, or to find out which bus route is right for you, clarify the fare, find out how to get to the station. subway, bus stop, etc.

A restaurant is a place that every tourist visits. However, the Chinese language is very different from Russian, as is the cuisine. Therefore, without knowing the translation of certain dishes, as well as their components, you will not be able to order what you want. To solve this problem, just open this topic and find the name of the dish that you like.

Hotel - when checking into a hotel, you need to fill out some paperwork, choose a room that you like, etc. In order to explain what you want from the hotel and to clarify the nuances of accommodation, just open this section and find the appropriate phrases.

Mall - A list of common phrases that you will definitely need while shopping in the mall.

Grocery supermarket - a list of words and phrases that will help you buy the products you are interested in.

Pharmacy - if you have health problems, but everything is written in Chinese in the pharmacy, and the pharmacist himself does not understand what you need, use this topic and you will buy the medicine that you need.

Cashier - words and phrases that will help you in a conversation with a cashier.

Chinese account - translation and sound of numbers in Chinese, from zero to a million.

Pronouns - pronunciation and translation of pronouns in Chinese.

Question words - frequently asked and important questions for tourists, their pronunciation and spelling.

Name of flowers - here you will find the translation of many colors and shades, as well as their correct pronunciation.

It is becoming increasingly difficult for Russian companies to compete with Chinese power engineers who have mastered the construction of cleaner coal-fired power plants

The topic of Russian cooperation with China in the energy sector has been discussed for a long time and actively - they talk about the oil and gas sector, and about coal, and about the electric power industry. At the junction of the last two sectors, there are power plants that produce electricity from coal. The study, which the Energy Center of the Moscow School of Management Skolkovo will release in January 2019, puts China in first place among 13 countries in the world where coal-fired generation plays a significant role both globally and in the national energy balance - and Russia closes this list. Let's try to figure out what lessons our country could learn from our southern neighbor in this area.

Chinese way

A lot of myths have developed around coal generation in general, and in particular the Chinese and Russian coal energy. Even industry experts sometimes subconsciously operate with information gleaned from textbooks of the end of the last century or numerous online publications. recent years, in which it is customary to discuss a quick “coal phase out” rather than deal with problems.

For example, it is generally accepted that China is exiting coal generation and stopping its coal-fired power plants, because they are very dirty, outdated, built using imperfect technologies; that coal stations have so spoiled the air in Chinese cities that they have to be closed and new ones not built; that the only exception to this trend is the project to export electricity from Russia to China - from huge new coal plants on Russian territory. On the other hand, it is widely believed that coal-fired generation in Russia has no big problems, it is steadily developing, and Russian companies have many opportunities to export their technologies in this area to China and other Asian countries.

In fact, coal-fired electricity production in China continues to grow, albeit not as fast as ten years ago (4% per year instead of 12%), and the volumes of this production are huge: they are more than all Russian power plants (including gas, nuclear, hydroelectric power plants) are produced in four years. But even with these quantitative differences, qualitatively similar aspects can be found.

For example, clean air in cities. In China, the situation is more difficult than in Russia. For example, in 2013, State Council Premier Li Keqiang declared war on air pollution. Thousands of people in Beijing lost their jobs due to the closure of smoky factories, boiler houses and power plants, millions of Beijingers lost the right to heat coal in their homes and literally froze in the winter. The last coal-fired power plant in Beijing, commissioned in 1999, was shut down in March 2017.

On the other hand, all this did not prevent the commissioning of two coal-fired thermal power plants in the suburbs of Beijing in 2016-2017, but they were built according to new Chinese environmental standards. From 1996 to 2012, the requirements for emissions from coal-fired power plants have been tightened by an average of 5.5 times for nitrogen oxides, 13 times for sulfur oxides and 70 times for ash - and have become more stringent than US, Japanese or EU standards . The range of permissible values ​​for the concentration of harmful substances was reduced by three to six times (for oxides) and 300 times for ash.

competitors from the south

Russia could use this experience: on the one hand, stimulate the closure of small “dirty” coal-fired boilers and stoves that are used by industry, housing and communal services or households, strictly regulate vehicle emissions, and, on the other hand, create conditions for energy companies to modernize coal-fired power plants, increase their "purity". The conversion of coal-fired stations to gas, which has been actively used in Russia over the past 40 years, is not always possible and expedient, coal-fired stations should become cleaner, and Chinese technologies would be very useful in this matter. China, in turn, could learn from our experience in developing district heating systems that allow heating cities with large, low-emission CHP plants.

As for the degree of technology perfection, back in the early 2000s, our companies could effectively compete for large orders in China: for example, in 2000 they built the Suizhong TPP (2x800 MW) with the latest Russian equipment at that time. But just a few years later, in 2008, Russian suppliers lost a tender to Chinese competitors for the construction of a new 660 MW power unit at Troitskaya GRES in Chelyabinsk region. The facts are inexorable: the most modern operating coal-fired power unit in Russia was designed and built by companies from Harbin - moreover, the equipment was manufactured there, and the role of our companies was reduced to adapting the project to Russian standards. At various times, from 900 to 2500 employees from China worked at the construction site of the station.

This is not surprising given China's colossal technological breakthrough over the past 15 years. In 2002, a government program was launched to create and commercialize Chinese ultra-supercritical technologies in coal-fired generation, a consortium of 23 companies and institutions was created, and already in 2006, the first two 1000 MW power units were launched in Zhejiang province. The technologies of the world leaders Siemens and Mitsubishi were used to manufacture the equipment. According to the IEA, the total costs of the state budget, provincial budgets and business on R&D in coal generation in 2012 reached $700 million. Since 2006, more than 200 modern coal-fired power units have been commissioned in China, including 94 with a capacity of 1000 MW. Unfortunately, there is not a single similar power unit in Russia. The fleet of coal-fired thermal power plants in China is one of the youngest in the world - an average of 15 years (in Russia - about 40), while Chinese thermal power plants have become 15% more efficient and many times cleaner in 15 years, leaving most Russian plants far behind.

It will be very difficult for Russian power machine builders to compete with the "Chinese dragon": the outcome of the struggle is a foregone conclusion, a few local victories in individual projects (in Mongolia, Vietnam) should not create unrealistic expectations. But for the Russian economy as a whole, the use of Chinese technologies for the deep modernization of coal-fired generation, the construction of new large facilities, including for exporting electricity to China or Japan, is a good opportunity to upgrade the industry without additional costs for the revival and development of its own competencies from scratch (the path , which, probably, can be followed in the gas energy industry). Even the Yerkovetskaya TPP in the Amur Region, planned for ten years, with a capacity of 5-7 GW (an unprecedented level for Russia, comparable to the capacity of all thermal power plants in general at Far East) is only 2% of the coal plants currently under construction in China and 6% of their annual commissioning.

It is important to note that a deep modernization of coal-fired power plants is also necessary in the light of the commitments that the governments of many countries (including Russia and China) take on to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. By the way, China is actively moving into renewable energy precisely for this reason - in 2017, it provided 55% of the global commissioning of solar stations based on photovoltaic cells (53 GW) and a little less than half of onshore wind farms (14.5 GW). Gas projects are also actively developing. The decisions of regulators in China both freeze and unfreeze construction projects of tens of gigawatts of coal-fired thermal power plants at once.

In the era of "energy transition", those energy assets that will show the maximum environmental and economic efficiency in a particular region will survive. Coal-fired generation in Russia will remain part of the landscape (primarily in Siberia), and in China it will be the backbone of the entire power industry for decades to come, so it’s time for us to start putting it in order, following the example of our southern neighbor.