verb tenses

[Daphne Earner]

For an intercultural book I'm writing, I need to know how many future and past tenses/forms there are in Chinese.

[Dylan Sung]

There are no verb tenses in Chinese in the same way that european languages have tenses. Chinese indicates the time of action by using a time-adverbial, that is, it uses a phrase specifically indicating the time the event occurs within the sentence. The mood of the verb, however tells you in what manner the verb is acting, that is, if it is on going, completed, or experiential.

Dyl.