A Chinese dictionary is a reference work for the Chinese language. There are two main types of Chinese dictionaries: zidian, which list individual Chinese characters and their definitions, and cidian, which list words and short phrases along with their meanings. Because written Chinese consists of tens of thousands of characters, over time editors of Chinese dictionaries have developed a number of ways to organize them for convenient reference.

Mandarin is a group of Chinese language dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of China. Because Mandarin originated in North China and most Mandarin dialects are found in the north, the group is sometimes referred to as Northern Chinese. Many varieties of Mandarin, such as those of the Southwest and the Lower Yangtze, are not mutually intelligible with the standard language. Nevertheless, Mandarin as a group is often placed first in lists of languages by number of native speakers.