"Does Chinese even have grammar?" is a real learner question, asked with hope. It does - it just spends its complexity in different places than European languages.
What does not exist
No verb conjugation (吃 covers eat/eats/ate/eaten), no grammatical gender, no noun cases, no plural agreement (一学生， three students is 三个学生 - noun unchanged), no articles, no capital letters, and no obligatory tense marking. The verb never changes shape. Ever.
What does exist
- Word order is load-bearing. With no case endings, position IS the grammar: 猫吃鱼 is the cat eats fish; 鱼吃猫 is a weirder sentence entirely.
- Aspect, not tense. 了/过/着 mark how an event sits in time rather than when - see the 了 guide.
- Measure words. Nouns count through classifiers: 三个人, 两本书, 那只猫. The measure-word guide covers the useful dozen.
- Sentence-final particles. 吗呢吧啊 carry questions and tone at the clause edge - the particles guide sorts them.
- Topic-first structure. "That movie, I saw it already" is normal Chinese: 那个电影我看过了. The word-order guide has the patterns.
Where learners actually struggle
Not conjugation tables - but the dozens of small frameworks: 比 comparisons, 把 disposals, 被 passives, 是…的 emphasis, result complements (吃完/看懂/做好). Each is a small rule, none is hard alone, and together they are the "grammar" that intermediate study actually teaches.
Common questions
Does Chinese have grammar?
Yes - but almost no morphology. Grammar lives in word order, particles, aspect markers and measure words rather than inflection. Learners find the early stages easy and the intermediate frameworks the real grammar.
Is Chinese grammar easier than English grammar?
For an English speaker, mostly yes: no conjugation, gender, case or agreement. The genuinely different machinery - topic-first order, aspect particles, complements - is where difficulty concentrates.
Does Chinese have tenses?
No grammatical tense. Time is expressed by adverbs (昨天, 明天) and aspect markers (了/过/着); context does the rest. 我吃饭 can be past, present or habitual.