Welcome to USE (Useful Survival Expressions), your essential guide to basic Mandarin. If you have ever been in one of those embarrassing situations where you don't have a clue what is being said or cannot ask the simplest of questions then this little book will come in handy.

Covering a wide range of subject matters from numbers through to environment, it gives you the most common and concise words and phrases in both Chinese characters and Pinyin (Mandarin romanization) and will prove USEFUL to you time and time again.