Early morning is one of the very best times in the day! Basically, morning in Chinese is stated as “early” + “on.” The Chinese character for early is “zao,” said with the falling and rising third tone and pronounced as “ds” in hands + “ou” as in ouch.
Some other meanings for “zao” are
- premature
- precocious
- in addition to becoming doubled (“zao” “zao”) to imply ASAP (as soon as possible) or coupled with other characters for words like
- breakfast,
- morning workouts, or
- long ago.
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Chinese in Plain English 