Tenses in Chinese language

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Chinese verbs do not conjugate like the verbs of most Indo-European languages such as English or Spanish. In English, for example, the verb "to eat" has many forms compared to its Chinese equivalent: "to eat" (infinitive), "eat, eats" (present), "ate", (simple past), "eaten" (past participle), "eating" (present participle), etc. Chinese only has one basic form, used for every person and tense; thus "chī" (吃) can equal all these forms. ("tā chī" 他吃: he eats, "nǐ chī" 你吃: you eat, etc.) In other words, Chinese does not express these differences through inflectional suffixes.

Expressing completed actions (past tense)

The simplest way of expressing past tense is to use adverbs such as "yesterday."
For example:
"zuótiān wǒ chī jī" 昨天我吃鸡, literally: yesterday I eat chicken is equal to saying "Yesterday I ate chicken".
我昨天在北京. I was in Beijing yesterday.
Another way of expressing past tense is to use the aspect particles "guò" (过) or "le" (了) , which cannot stand by themselves but can express completed actions when placed after verbs.
For example:
 我看見了三个人。- wǒ kànjiàn le sān ge rén le! - I saw three people!
Past tense in Chinese can also be emphasized by surrounding the verb and direct object with the words "shì-de" (是-的). Here the time is sufficient to express the past tense but the "shì-de" pattern emphasizes for purpose.
For example "wǒ shì zuótiān chī jī de" (我是昨天吃鸡的). This phrasing emphasizes the time in which the action took place more than the action itself.

Expressing actions in the near future (future tense)

When wanting to express actions in the near future, you can use the construct: 要(yào)/就(jiù)/快(kuài)...了(le), here the modal particle 了 appears at the end of the sentence. When using 快 you can't use a construct of time like the word "yesterday".
For example: 我要看見你了 - wǒ yào kànjiàn nĭ le! - I'm about to see you, I will soon see you.

Expressing continuous tense

The continuous tense, being performing the action right now, is expressable in chinese with 正在 (zhèngzài), or just 正 (zhèng) or 在 (zài), although this is optional. The particle 呢 (ne) however, is always placed at the end of the sentence:
我正在看你呢 (wǒ zhèngzài kàn nĭ ne) - I'm looking at you.