My 18 months experience of reading original Chinese webnovels

[MoonIvy]

You may know me as one of the authors of the Heavenly Path reading guide, we’ve recently moved this guide to a new location, along with our webnovels and books resources. We hope this is a much better format than the previous Google Docs and Spreadsheet.

 

I thought I’ll share with you my experience of spending 18 months reading original Chinese novels everyday, novels I had previously never read in any other form. I jumped straight into original work because reading something like Harry Potter in Chinese just didn’t interest to me.

 

As well as reading, I also regularly watch Chinese TV but just so I don’t bored you to death, I’m only going to focus on reading, passive vocabulary, and from intermediate onwards. Maybe I’ll talk about the other aspects in another post in the future.

 

 

My reading method and word review technique

When it comes to reading, it’s really simple, I don’t do any unknown word extraction or pre-learning, I simply open the book either on Chrome or Readibu and start reading with a popup dictionary. I would note down unknown words, then after my daily reading session is over, I would go through that list and pick some words to add to my Pleco deck. I decide these words in a very subjective manner, literally do I think it’s useful to me, have I seen this before and am I likely to see this again.

 

As for reviewing words with SRS, it’s super simple. I’m using the Pleco SRS flashcard add-on. I have most settings set to the default, and I do a review once a day. Pleco would display the word in Chinese characters only, I say the word out loud (recite the definition in my head if I need to), and then ask Pleco will reveal the pinyin, definition and play the audio. I would then give myself a score of 1-6.

 

Sometimes if I struggle with certain words I would look up example sentences in Baidu Fanyi, write them down and then write my own sentences with those words. If I need further help, I’ll ask on Discord.

 

 

The beginning...

Before jumping into native novels, I read short children’s bedtime stories on https://www.qigushi.com/baobao/ for a few months to prep myself for literature style text.

 

End of September 2020 was when I decided to start my first native novel. At the time, I had around 1,700 words in my Pleco deck, which I had collected from day one of my learning journey.

I picked up a children’s novel called 舒克和贝塔历险记, which was recommended to me by a native.

 

Following on from 舒克和贝塔历险记, I read 大林和小林，秃秃大王，小布头奇遇记，小布头新奇遇记 and 没有风的扇子.

 

Even though these were all children’s books aimed at 6-7 years olds, I found them to be really difficult at the time. I had to do it slowly, and at times I had to spread a chapter over two days. Slowly as the weeks went by, it became easier and easier as I learnt more words.

 

I felt that I jumped into native books too early, as I had a real difficult time at the beginning. I later discovered https://chinese.littlefox.com/en which I wished I had discovered earlier. If I could go back in time, I think reading and listening to all the Level 3-5 Little Fox Chinese content before jumping into these books would have made the experience less painful.

 

3 months later...

By mid December 2020, I had around 3,500 words in my Pleco deck. I decided to up my game and started a slightly more sophisticated children’s book series called 笑猫日记 by 杨红樱.

It was a huge step up, due to the more mature writing style, less repetition of the same words, and the increase usage of chengyus.

 

At the beginning of the series, I only managed to read one chapter a day (approx 2k characters), which took me around 30mins, before feeling completely drained. As I learnt more words and my literacy ability improved, it became less draining and occasionally I managed to read two chapters a day. I ended up reading 6 笑猫日记 books in 3 months.

 

It also helped that I read from the same series for a long period of time as I got use to her writing style and many of the same words and chengyus were repeated throughout the series.

 

Another 3 months later...

By mid March 2021, I had around 5,300 words in my Pleco deck. Once again, I decided to up my game, and started an urban fantasy children’s series called 幻想大王 by 杨鹏. The added fantasy elements and longer paragraphs made this quite a step up from 笑猫日记.

 

Exactly the same as with 笑猫日记, I was slow at the beginning then eventually I picked up my reading pace after a while.

 

I read 4 books from the series before moving onto something else.

 

2 months later...I started to dip my toes in the adult webnovel world...

By May 2021, I had in my deck around 6,300 words. I decided to give it a go at a relatively simple but long cultivation webnovel (total of 1.2mil characters) that I had discovered, 重生之极品皇子妃 by 叶忆落. Chapter lengths were around 1.5k at the beginning, then it increased to 3k after around chapter 70.

 

This was a mistake, I should have waited a little longer and pick a shorter webnovel as I ended up spending 6 months on this. Luckily I did eventually got really fast at reading it, due to many repeated words and her simple writing style, else it might have dragged for longer than 6 months.

 

At the same time, I did manage to also read two more children’s books called 我的狼妈妈 and 我的狐狸妹妹. I also read a few other short adult webnovels: 我男朋友好像有病，狐狸尾巴露出来了，当你走进图书馆而书里夹了一枚书签.

 

6 months later...I was fully in the webnovel world...

By October 2021 I had in my deck around 8,000 words, and have been reading native novels for just over a year. I would say at this point, native content for adults started to become a bit more accessible. I also learnt how to navigate a few webnovel platforms to search for content.

 

Today....

As for today, I have around 9,000 words in my deck and have read roughly 4million character worth of content.

 

Read adult webnovels:

• 重生之极品皇子妃 by 叶忆落

• 你是不是喜欢我 by 吕天逸

• 我男朋友好像有病 by 一只大雁

• 狐狸尾巴露出来了 by 姜难吃

• 当你走进图书馆而书里夹了一枚书签 by 晚秋初十

• 微微一笑很倾城 by 顾漫

• 带着小卖部去古代 by 叶忆落 (dropped around 50%, might go back to this and finish it)

• 我家又不是神奇生物养殖场！by 唇亡齿寒0

• 做树真的好难 by 喝豆奶的狼

• 撒野 by 巫哲

• 幻想农场 by 西子绪

Read next:

• 镇魂 by priest (starting on Monday with some members of 看剧学汉语 Discord)

 

Final Reflection

My reading speed increased as time went on. As I didn’t take notes on my speed time over time, any improvement was based on feeling. One year after starting this reading journey was when I noticed a significant difference. I checked my reading speed recently while I was reading 幻想农场 by 西子绪, and found myself at around 200 characters per minute (so in 30mins, I can read around 6,000 characters). This is three times the speed from when I first started.

 

The amount of time I can focus on a piece of text without feeling drained has also increased. Nowadays (18 months later), as long as that content doesn’t contain too many words I don’t know or complex sentence structure or grammar, I can read for as long as I want.

 

I currently know around 2.8k characters, and at a level where I can comfortably read (with occasional help from a dictionary) some slice of life modern novels. Novels with a bit of fantasy or supernatural elements mixed in are also manageable. Anything heavy on certain themes such as ancient martial arts, high fantasy and sci-fi are still quite difficult. This is something I’m slowly working on right now.

 

General FAQ

Why have you only read webnovels?

It’s simply ease of access, reading from a website allows me to use tools such as Zhongwen or Readibu. PayPal payment is also available on platforms like 起点中文网 and 晋江文学城. They are also extremely cheap. 幻想农场 by 西子绪 (a 700k character webnovel) is around $3-$4 to buy via 晋江文学城.

 

9k words doesn’t seem like it’s enough to read native content?

That is simply just the number of words I have in my flashcard deck, many words are learnt from content and many are combination of characters I’m already familiar with. For example, I know 书店 and 网上, so I don’t necessary need 网上书店 in my deck.

 

How do you determine which novel to pick up next?

I based it on the total length and number of unique characters or recommendation from other learners. Usually I would give the first few chapters a try, if I really struggle then I put that on hold and try something else.

 

Do you have any goals of the rest of 2022?

Continue learning Chinese of course, I’m still far from being able to read everything without a dictionary. I don’t have a fixed ordered reading list as I decide base on my mood at the time but I would like to read 全球高考 by 木苏里 and 夺梦 by 非天夜翔 this year.

 

Key take aways

Patience & perseverance is key - The journey from 1k to 3k characters is a difficult and frustrating one, especially if you want to read Chinese literature. Not going to lie, I’ve wanted quit many times, but I’m so glad I pulled through, it was so worth it in the end.

 

Don’t rush - It’s tempting to rush to the best work, but don’t do it, just take your time. For example, if I had attempted 幻想农场 2 years ago, or even a year ago, I would have been so frustrated with all the unknown words and the slow reading speed, that I might even have drop learning Chinese entirely, but instead I had an amazing experience!

 

Take that first step - I know many learners find it difficult to pick up a completely brand new native novel that they’ve never read before in another language, but it honestly isn’t as scary as it seems. The difficult part is actually finding a suitable novel and taking that first step. The first few chapters might be a bit difficult but trust me it will get easier after a few chapters. If you’re looking for something to read, maybe give one of these a go:

HSK (2.0) 4 - give 秃秃大王 a try

HSK (2.0) 5 - 我的狼妈妈 or 我的狐狸妹妹 are good options

HSK (2.0) 6 - 他们都说我遇到了未知生物 by 青色羽翼, 蜜汁炖鱿鱼 by 墨宝非宝 or 撒野 by 巫哲 would be good choices for this level

For more recommendations check out our Webnovels and Books resource page.

 

Some extra tips

Listening is important - I know I haven’t really touched on listening in this post, but listening (whether it’s watching tv, listening to audiobook or a podcast) really really helps with passive vocabulary acquisition and retention.

Use your vocabulary - Actively using vocabulary makes a huge difference in retention, so if you’re able to use what you learn from reading when speaking and writing then go for it.

 

Conclusion

Thank you for reading my ramble, I hope I’ve been able to inspire you, and you’ve learnt something from me post. All the best in your Mandarin Chinese learning journey.
 

Remember, learning a new language enables you to discover all the culture has to offer, so go out there, discover and enjoy.


I tried to keep the post short (still ended up quite long), so I didn't go into too much details. So please do ask questions, and if you want any more details on anything I'll be happy to provide it.

[Moshen]

Thanks, @MoonIvy.  If you were to do it again, would you still start with children's stuff?  Did you truly find it interesting/worth the time?  I would have a very hard time being interested in such material.

[MoonIvy]

@MoshenIf I was to start again, I would still start with children's content but I would start a bit later. Knowing what I know now, I would definitely complete the stories that I find interesting on Little Fox Chinese, and maybe buy DuChinese premium for a month or two before starting. Interest is a difficult one, I personally found most of them to be quite interesting. They reminded me of similar stories/books that I loved as a child, so it was extremely nogistic. 

Having compared some learner reading materials (i.e. Little Fox Chinese, DuChinese, Mandarin Comparison), they are still miles away from native adult novels. Creators of reading machine for learners would write this with the learner in mind, they would use only certain grammar structure/writing style, stick to certain words and be sure to repeat words through the story. However, authors that write native adult content are writing for a literate adult, they don't need to care about sticking to certain words, and they will use whatever word, chengyu, grammar structure, writing style they feel like. I'll quicky also mention the length of original native adult novels, nothing out there for learners can even compare to this! Having said all that, so far, I've found young children's books to be the middle ground between content for learners and native adult novels. They are longer than content for learners, uses a decent amount of common chengyus, more advance grammar, but still relatively short, with shorter chapters, sentences and paragraphs. 

Some people are able to go from something like Mandarin Comparison to adult novels straight away, but I couldn't. Just the length (total length, and chapter length) of adult novels were already off putting enough for me. It was extremely satisifying to finish a book every 2-3 weeks. For me, this was a big motiviator during an extremely difficult period.

I only really spent 9 months on children's content, and for me, it was 9 months well spent. I only had to deal with it for 9 months, and now I never have to do it again.

[becky82]

I was looking at your Tools list; one I would add is a "browser highlighter".  I use Textmarker but there are others.  It allows you to highlight words (like you might do with an actual highlighter in a textbook) and it keeps track of those you've highlighted (screenshots: what the highlights look like and list of webpages I've added highlights on).

 

I color new words green, proper nouns blue, idioms yellow, and parts I don't understand red.  This way, when I've finished reading, I can easily find the parts I might want to revise.

[MoonIvy]

@becky82oh wow this is amazing! Thanks for the recommendation

[KupGriye]

Thank you for the post. I followed the exact same path (giving up on textbooks, tons of children stories on readibu and then adult webnovels) with one major difference - I have not made even a single flashcard. My progress has been so rapid and beyond my wildest dreams that you will never ever catch me with a flashcard or a word list. I think it's a hindrance. Perhaps it's only possible to advance without flashcards until you mastered the most common, say, 5,000 characters, and afterwards I will see the use in flashcards of the "rare" characters. But until I'm there (and I suspect it will not take long with this method), no flashcards for me. 

 

flashcards or no flashcards, this method can replace many years of boring and many times fruitless study with perhaps a year and a half of fun cultural reading. 

 

[Lu]

On 3/4/2022 at 6:54 PM, MoonIvy said:

I thought I’ll share with you my experience of spending 18 months reading original Chinese novels everyday, novels I had previously never read in any other form.

Thank you for this great write-up! It clearly worked really well for you and the way you explain it, anyone can see what you did and choose to follow in your footsteps.

 

Aside from this write-up, I just want to say I'm glad you came to the forums. Web novels are bigger and bigger these days and it's great to have someone aboard with clear expertise and experience with these books. I hope you stick around!

[MoonIvy]

@KupGriye Reading is such a great way to learn! Do you have any recommendations? Children books and webnovels!

@LuI'm glad to be here, I'll stick around. I hope more people here get into webnovels. They're just much easier to access from oversea.

[MoonIvy]

I posted the original post in various places and received some questions. Here's the follow up of the previous write up.

How much time did you spend on reading and reviewing words each day?

The amount of time I spent each day changed over time.

When I first started with the children’s stories, I spent only 10-15mins each day reading one short story. During this time, I only added 5-10 words a day to my deck, so my daily review count was quite low. I can’t remember how long I spent on these, but I don’t think it was more than 15mins.

 

After I moved onto children’s books, I started to increase my reading time 30mins a day. Due to reading more, there were more new words to learn. I limited myself to a max of 20 new words on most days. That quickly racked up my daily review count. I remember spending 20-30mins most days on reviewing words.

Nowadays, my reading time varies, but it’s usually between 30mins-1hr, sometimes can go up to 3hrs if I’m in a bingeing mood. As for new words, I only add around 5-10 a day at max, which has massively reduced my daily review count.

 

Were the children’s content useful?

I believe this is one of the aspect many people care about. Children’s content is by all means not the only way. However I do feel that, as of right now, books for children are a very good way for learners to bridge the gap between content for learners and adult novels, particularly for fiction lovers.

Just to show you what I mean, I’m going to use the very popular Mandarin Companion books as an example for content for learners. I’ve met a few learners who, after finishing all of Level 2 MC, were under the impression that they were ready for adult novels, only to be completely demoralised after struggling to read and understand the first paragraph.

Each Level 2 MC books contains around 450 unique characters and have around 10k-13k total characters. All MC level 2 books pull from the same pool of 450 characters, more information here from the podcast by the creators of Mandarin Companion.

DuChinese is slight more difficult than Mandarin Companion in terms of level. Their advanced lessons each contain around 450-600 unique characters. But the lacks the endurance practice that Mandarin Companion provides.

Just to give you an idea of the gap, many modern, slice of life, romance Chinese novels (usually considered to be the easiest genre) will contain around 2,100 to 3,000 unique characters. Length wise will vary, but on average they’re contain 150k-250k characters in total. Just from these simple stats, you can already see the gap is huge. I haven’t even touched on other aspects like grammar and sentence structure.

In comparison, some original children’s books for very young children, such as 秃秃大王 by 张天翼, has around 1,000 - 1,500 unique characters and around 10k-20k characters in length, which although still a challenge, is it much more manageable than an adult novel.

All the children’s books I read were all generally very short, and I was able to finish one in 2-3 weeks. Finishing a book every 2-3 weeks was a massive motivator for me. Motivation is an extremely important important aspect when learning a new language.

If you were to start today, would you still read children’s stories?

This is actually a difficult question to answer. Without experiencing it myself, I wouldn’t know if a different path would have worked. For me, the most important aspect wasn’t necessary the result, but the journey.

Reading those shorter children’s stories kept me motivated due to the shorter length, and the ease I read them with. I was able to keep up with reading children’s content without any breaks for 9 months before I jumped into some easier adult content. If it were other content, I really don’t know if I would have been as motivated.

For me, it worked, so in short, I probably would do it again.

However, I would suggest something a little different for those reading this and wondering how to start bridging that gap from graded readers to native novels. That would be to go through most of level 3 to 5 of Little Fox Chinese stories. As these are content created for learners, they purposely repeat certain vocabulary and grammar structure, making them more accessible than jumping straight into native content.

I did an analysis of all their Level 5 stories and found that, as of today, it contains around 2,500 unique characters. The writing style of the level 5 stories are quite similar to many children’s book, so it’s a perfect stepping stone.

Did you make any mistakes?

For me personally, there weren't any major mistakes or any parts where I felt I wasted a lot of time and gained nothing out of it.

However, I felt that I jumped into long webnovels a bit too early. At the time, I was really desperate to read something adult, and I decided to read this extremely long 1.2mill character webnovel. I don’t regret reading it, but it was just the wrong timing. I should have waited a bit longer, and tried a bit harder to search for shorter webnovels.

Luckily, members of 看剧学汉语 Discord and I have since found some shorter and easier adult webnovels, that are very approachable for someone with knowledge of the most common 1,800 characters.

What about listening, speaking and writing skills?

I didn’t go into listening, speaking and writing in my previous post, but surprisingly I received many questions regarding this especially listening. It seems that many learners want to know if reading can help with other aspects of language learning.

In short, reading alone can’t improve your listening, speaking and writing skills if you don’t practice those as well. By reading, you will not magically be able to listen to an audiobook if you’ve never heard the words being spoken by a native, at a native speed.

However, what reading will do is provide you with the vocabulary to aid in your listening, speaking and writing.

If and when possible, you should try and practice all four skills at the same time. If this isn’t possible or that it’s too overwhelming, focusing on reading and listening first would be extremely beneficial. You can always practice speaking and writing afterwards. At the beginning, input over output!

[Dr Mack Rettosy]

Thank you for sharing your experiences MoonIvy, this was an incredible write-up! It’s motivating to see others use extensive reading successfully, it is such a powerful approach, both in terms of effectiveness and enjoyment as @KupGriye mentioned.

 

Fully agree that the jump between “advanced” graded readers and native content is massive, something I’m still working hard to bridge. I also found children material essential for this gap. I’ve met  resistance around this, but imo a little open-mindedness goes a long way for language learning. I’m finally starting to feel “on the other side” of the bridge, onto my third adult novel, 活着.
 

Sprinkling a few web novels into my reading list would definitely shake things up in a good way, so I’ll have to have a look through  your list.

 

edit: two questions.

 

1) What are your thoughts on using mono-lingual dictionaries?

 

2) Any desire or plans to go to paper? (Realize this may not be applicable with web novels)

[MoonIvy]

On 4/21/2022 at 9:51 PM, Dr Mack Rettosy said:

1) What are your thoughts on using mono-lingual dictionaries?

I like them. Reading in Chinese and looking up unknown words in Chinese is the ultimate goal! However, I definitely wouldn't recommend using it exclusively at the beginning, something that it worth slowly dipping into. I'm been using 微信读书 (a native digital book/webnovel platform) quite a bit lately, so been trying out their inbuilt cn->cn dictionary. I find it's pretty good and explains words very well.

 

On 4/21/2022 at 9:51 PM, Dr Mack Rettosy said:

2) Any desire or plans to go to paper? (Realize this may not be applicable with web novels)

You'll be surprise the number of webnovels that recieve a physical published version. You'll find quite a good amount of recent published novels originated from a webnovel. Sometimes the webnovel version will get updated to match the edited published version. In terms of whatever I'll buy physical books, it'll be very rare. I stopped buying physical books 10 years ago when I got my first Kindle (English books btw). I recently bought a new Android eReader (Boox Leaf), which I'm using for the Chinese digital books and webnovel platforms. So I get my Chinese webnovel (and published books) on a paperlike screen, who need physcial books? Having said that, I will buy some books in physical form if I really really love it, and want a copy of it to look pretty on my shelf. Getting physical Chinese books in my country is SO expensive! I'll give you an example, 幻想农场 (which I talked about in my initial write up), cost around $4 to buy from the webnovel platform, and the physical version (renamed to 不离, and splited into 2 books) is $14.27 each from BookDepository, that's a total of $28.54 .... 7 times the price. I really really really have to love it to spend that money.

[MoonIvy]

I've done a follow up post on Reddit of my last 3 months' reading experience: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/comments/uy70hh/21_months_of_reading_native_books_and_breaking/

Hope you'll find it interesting.