春天(chūn tiān) - spring in Mandarin

春天 (chūn tiān) means spring, the first of the four seasons in the Mandarin calendar. It combines 春 (chūn, "spring") with 天 (tiān), which by itself means "day" or "sky" but here functions as a season suffix, matching the pattern of 夏天 (xià tiān, "summer"), 秋天 (qiū tiān, "autumn") and 冬天 (dōng tiān, "winter").

In everyday speech 春天 (chūn tiān) carries the same associations it does in English: new growth, warmer weather, and the start of the farming year. It is also the setting for 春节 (chūn jié), "Spring Festival", the formal name for Chinese New Year, even though the festival itself usually falls in what English speakers would still call winter.

The bare character 春 (chūn) turns up alone in plenty of compounds worth knowing, such as 青春 (qīng chūn, "youth") and 春节 (chūn jié, "Spring Festival, Chinese New Year").