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*steps out of the lurkerzone* Hello everyone, and welcome to a thread designed to document my Chinese progress. Quick Backstory: I lived and worked in China for two years a long time ago, and came out just shy of HSK 5 level. I speak/listen to Chinese every day for work, but haven't read anything beyond extremely daily conversation/IM topics in forever. I haven't deliberately practiced Chinese in roughly four years. My vocabulary is pretty bleak as a result, and has probably regressed to around 1500-2000 words tops. I now have a few months to play with where I'm likely to have afternoons free, and I want to use this time to improve/resurge my Mandarin as much as I can, and - above all else - get into good habits with it. My Current Level: I took a HSK 5 mock a few days ago and scored 170/300, with the following breakdown: My listening is by far my strongest suit, and I found the audio somewhat slow. My score reflects a broader problem - my reading has become so poor that I occasionally couldn't recognise the multiple choice answers in the listening section, dragging the score further down. I rarely write, but I believe this score could be improved through extensive reading and deliberate grammar practice when necessary. Study Plan: Immersion & Anki. Rather than studying Mandarin with textbooks (again) or single-word, contextless flashcards (again), I'm going to try and seriously take a leaf out of the AJATT book - that is, immersing myself in Chinese as much as i can. I'm using Migaku to generate in-context flashcards in Anki with audio, tones and explanations. I'm getting flashcards from a mixture of native content (predominantly Chinese-language dubs and subs on Netflix or native content on YouTube) and from the HSK vocabulary list(s). I'm aiming at learning a minimum of 20 new words a day for the next three years. I'm happy for this to be more on some days and less on others, providing that works out as the average. Healthy Competition. A friend of mine is moving to Taiwan, and we want to see who can make the most progress in a year. We're each tracking our time spent doing Chinese on Toggl Track, and can see how much progress the other has made in a given time period. No prizes for winning, but joint progress and accountability are nice. This thread. I'm going to post here at the beginning of each month to lay out my progress in the month prior. Update posts are likely to be fairly brief, and will cover what I've watched, read, and screenshots of time spent and Anki stats. I know I find long-term progress logs like that inspiring - if you're reading this (and this post is old), then I hope you find this inspiring, too. 😊 Goals: The main aim is to reach practical fluency in Mandarin. This is not a short-term endeavour, and I expect this to take years. I am budgeting three years for this, at which point life is highly likely to become far more demanding of my time. I would like this to culminate in passing the HSK 7-9 exam with a HSK 8+. The more 'concrete' goals along the way are: Next Six Months: Have 1000 mature Anki cards Have 2500 mature Anki cards Pass the HSK 5 with a 'strong' score (250+) Next Year: Have 5000 mature Anki cards Pass the HSK 6 with a 'strong' score (250+) Next Two Years: Have 10,000 mature Anki cards Have 15,000 mature Anki cards Pass the HSK 7-9 with a 7+ grade Next Three Years: Have 20,000 mature Anki cards Pass the HSK 7-9 with an 8+ grade Bonus Goals: Have 25,000 mature Anki cards Have 30,000 mature Anki cards I consider 30,000 mature Anki cards as being the effective 'end-game' of me actively studying Mandarin. I doubt going that deep is necessary, but I do think that would give me a level of fluency that's actively uncommon amongst learners of Chinese as a second language. I believe the long-term consistency is feasible (although will take discipline), and the immersion focus sound. I'd love to hear any feedback you lovely forum-dwellers may have - any advice on how to manage time, and any lessons learned from failures that you've seen/have made yourselves from which I could benefit. I hope this makes for good, fun and consistent reading over the next few years. 😊

There's this new HSK7-9 mock exam textbook on Jingdong (预售北大正版 汉语水平考试HSK(七—九级)全真模拟题集). The first author is listed as 刘云, who's the first author on other textbooks I've encountered. Edit: I've tried purchasing this from Jingdong twice now, and they haven't sent it. I see it's also on Taobao, so maybe I should try there instead.

FWIW, I was just at a conference in Beijing on this very subject and HSKMock is from the actual HSK developers, and they confirmed to me that it uses the same algorithms as the real HSK test for stuff like evaluating your pronunciation. So it should be a very good proxy for the actual HSK7-9. (and putting my Pleco hat on, we're discussing ways we can also offer these sorts of high-quality mock tests in or through our app, and that plus a couple of other HSK things are why I was at that conference)

Arguing with a native speaker (about nearly anything concerning his/her native language) is always a fruitless task... Not only because they always know what they/you are talking about, and thus are always a source of accurate and relevant wisdom (maybe just a tad sarcastic), but... Well, you know what I mean... But more to the point, we often insist on the absolute accuracy of the paradigms chosen to teach us differences and nuances in someone elses language. But often, those differences and nuances only exist for our benefit, to allow us to make correct choices in their language. Other than that, they may not only not exist, but are only the product of the efforts of some teacher trying to make someone without any other frame of reference understand some strange linguistic phenomenon in the target language. Anybody who has faced down a Korean native speaker over the differences in the pronunciation of any consonant (say "K" versus "G") anywhere in a Korean word or sentence will know what I mean. But the erring learner is absolutely, resolutely confident in the explanation provided in their textbook, and tries to defend the difference to the last breath, ignoring dialect, education levels, male versus female differences, etc., ad infinitum... Be very careful in betting your reputation on whatever you have been taught in a textbook, class, podcast, or the like... Reality is always vastly more complicated... Just sayin'.. TBZ

So I just had another session with ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode, and I guess I stand corrected from my original post! It was a positive experience this time around. --I made my native language (English) the basis of the whole lesson. I began with, "Hey, I'm a native English speaker who wants to practice Mandarin Chinese. Can you ask me a question in Chinese, and I'll try to answer it?" --Whenever things got difficult in Chinese, I would simply switch back to English and say, "I was struggling to communicate what I meant there, but what I meant to say was XYZ. How do you say that concisely in the Chinese language?" --There were actually a couple of times when ChatGPT said, "I understand what you're trying to say, but that's an unnatural way of saying it. Here is a better way to phrase it in Chinese...." Wow. --As I said in the last post, the bot is rather long-winded in its responses, which (on the bright side) can be a more immersive and active way to practice listening comprehension. The audio content is driven by what you've spoken beforehand, and you're having to listen carefully so you can respond afterwards. So it's more engaging than listening to a pre-recorded monologue. --When you exceed the time limit for "advanced voice mode," the voice chat doesn't get interrupted. It just gets a little bit dumber. --Finally, as other people have pointed out, if you're nervous that you can't talk fast enough and the chat bot will interrupt you, you can just hold down on the screen with your finger until you're done talking, and the bot won't try answering until you release it.

Just my two Taiwanese dollars on the Lucky Bookstore... Very, very nice people... When I go there, they often sit my wife and me down and serve us tea while they wait on us... But they can't always satisfy everybody all the time, and especially at the time someone shows up with a big list of stuff they want NYOW... If I were you, I'd call ahead of time, as far ahead as you can, tell them what you want, how many copies of each, and when (day, month, year, and time of day) you intend to show up. They will be able to tell you what they have and don't have (and more importantly, what they can't get). That will save (face for them, and disappointment for you) everyone's feelings, and make for good business all around... Keep in mind that some of the more popular programs are pretty stingy with their materials, keeping the supplies for actual students, and sometimes restricting distribution only to actual students. Also, look at some of the MTC's newer stuff. Just remember, you may have to try some horse trading to get what you want. Just sayin' (based on experience)... TBZ

I studied with LTL in Chengde this year. What an experience! I met Zhongwen, her friends and some family members too. My favourite things: - The food (home made Chinese cuisine is the worlds finest IMHO) - No English. I was sceptical about this quote from LTL before. However, it's 100% correct. You actually think in Mandarin which is wild to me. - The city. So calming, so easy going, a world away from the hustle and bustle The new train line between Chengde and Beijing is a great plus too. Just a 1 hour journey now. Will be back soon.

For you seasoned folk on here, this is an ordinary thing. I went to the Chinese Embassy in Madrid (American living in Spain) on Monday and I have been given a 10 year multiple entry visa, 60 days each entry! I'm extremely excited since I have never been to China. I will be studying Mandarin in Kunming at Keats Chinese School.

These exams are fairly sparse, both with respect to time and distance (there doesn't appear to be any listed on the chinesetest.cn website currently, so the next one will probably be months away). Coincidentally, one of the locations the November HSK7-9 exam was held is Weihai, which is where I live. I'm tempted to make a push for it. I already know something like 70%+ of the vocabulary. We'll see, I guess.

I have officially passed the HSK6, getting just over 60 in each section. I note that I took the handwritten exam, and I have Australian nationality, and I took the exam in China, so I could be taking this exam on "nightmare" difficulty. According to chinesetest.cn's analysis, the global average on the exam I took was 205 (or 68%): The Australian average was 250 (or 80%):

Another 字 word: 八字胡

Mastering Chinese has always been a lifelong dream for me since I was 18. I am now 31 and I have been a lurker for well over 10 years and actually live in China for the last 2 years, but Chinese has not improved at all (mostly due to work and other personal factors). I can communicate basic convo's in Chinese but struggle much more than that. At this point, I am pretty ashamed of my ability and so have resolved recently to refocus on studying and improving (also alongside the fact as of a 1-2 months ago, I no longer work and so I can fully focus on this). I am starting a mini-journal to document my journey. I found this super helpful with another big project that I did in my life (long story for another time). My goal is to be near-native fluency for general everyday use - in particular, being able to converse and make friends at a deeper level on specific topics. I have hit the books again as of 1 month ago. At that time, my vocab was basically HSK 5 level (i.e., 2,500 words). Listening was OK (heritage speaker) but struggled a lot with unknown words. I have spent the last 30 days focusing on vocab via Anki, working through the HSK lists (HSK2 at this point). 30 days later, I've largely studied most of HSK vocab for HSK lvl 6 (i.e., hitting the ~5,000 mark). I've been punching out roughly ~100 new words per day, which is equivalent to ~1.5 hours per day and ~800 reviews per day per day. Stats below. I have spent a little time to reading but have not managed to get much progress on this. I went through one Korean drama in Chinese using LanguageReactor and tried my hand with a manga (used an IPad to take screenshots and then translate unknown words via Pleco / ChatGPT). Next plan of action is to focus on blogs / news articles etc. Obviously I hear the consenus that I need to be converting to reading naturally as opposed to Anki. Will update this on a regular basis over time.

Ambitious goals are inspiring. Everyone has a different method, but I am puzzled by the obsession with Anki. The main bottleneck for virtually all learners is listening skills, that is fast native speech with possibly non-standard pronunciation. It will limit your conversation immensely if you do not understand your interlocutor. In terms of vocabulary, I would define what topics interest you and what topics are you likely going to talk about. If you are heavily interested in history, then I would focus on that and ignore medical or technical vocabulary until you need it. I have zero coding skills and I invest zero time learning the Chinese words related to having a conversation about coding. Finally I suggest just using Lingq or similar devices for reading. You will likely acquire vocabulary more efficiently that way than by flashcarding. I am German and know probably 30K plus words in English. I am quite certain I have learned fewer than 500 of those words by flashcarding over the years...

My activity on this website has been minimal since early last Summer, but my Chinese practice has continued. These days, my daily routine is basically the following: 1. 5-10 minutes of handwriting practice with the 5,000 HSK1-6 SRS flashcards. I've been using this deck since around 2018/2019, so the cards are very, very spaced out, and it's a nice way of maintaining my character writing without spending too much time. 2. 20-30 minutes of reading. I read whatever I can find. Sometimes I read Chinese news. Sometimes I read long posts on Zhihu. Recently, I've begun to explore magazines on WeChat Books. I bought single issues of 读者 (kind of like "Reader's Digest," with short stories), 看天下 , and 百科知识. It's nice to have color pictures and diagrams, as well as higher journalistic standards than Zhihu posts. Sometimes I get a bit lost, because the authors assume that you already have some kind of cultural knowledge/context to understand what they're saying, and they don't explicitly give it. 读者 is my favorite so far. After I read through these, I may explore other kinds of magazines. 3. Intermittent listening practice. Sometimes I listen to a podcast while working. Sometimes I watch a 20-minute YouTube video. I don't have a strict quota. My skills are good enough to follow along with most things. In the next 2-3 years (as I approach 10 years of practice), I hope my listening comprehension gets less and less spotty. I've been tempted by ChatGPT's "advanced voice mode" feature for speaking practice. I tried it out, and I have the following reservations: 1. Without a monthly subscription, you can only get a very brief "free trial" version. 2. A monthly subscription is $20 USD. Not crazy expensive, but a bit more than I'm willing to pay for a tool that I otherwise have no use for. 3. Even with a monthly subscription, the advanced voice mode has a daily limit on the amount of time you can use it. 4. It can't (at least as flexibly) correct your errors in real time. I.e., "That's an awkward way of saying that. You should say it this way instead!" Or, "Your pronunciation/tone was slightly off!" It's good at understanding what you're *trying* to say, even when you're saying it the wrong way, and it responds with the correct phrasing (e.g., I said "打小提琴," and it responded with, "Oh, yes! 拉小提琴! That's a great thing to do."). I'll give it credit for that. 5. The pace/rhythm of conversation has improved, but it's still not like a 100% natural conversation. If you're too slow in your response, the chat bot will interrupt you. It tends to give long and detailed answers, which is good for listening practice, but you'll probably spend more time listening than talking.

Hi there - I've spent the last month continuing to be largely focused on vocab (I would say ~75% of my time on Anki learning vocab and ~25% on books / movies). I know the standard advice is to get more into native content rather than Anki and I'd like to transition to be more focused on native content but so far haven't been able to. The reasoning as follows: + I'm making good progress on vocab and have got into a good rhythm (and it gets significantly easier, more on this below) + I haven't found reading books effective yet in terms of learning vocab when compared with Anki. I tried graded readers but they are incredibly boring. On the other hand, I downloaded 三体 (the book) but have only got about 35 pages out of 900 so far. Personally, I find reading books at this level a little difficult because you are slowed significantly by the volume of new words and the frequency of these new words aren't high enough for "natural spaced repetition". i.e., you get too many "easy words" in most blocks of text and the unknown words, while of high frequency in total, are not frequent enough on individual word basis to get much repetition. + On a more general level, I struggle with learning from native content because of vocabulary limitations which hinders comprehension which then hinders repetition speed. I still need much more vocab to be able to understand radio / movies without having to pause every so often. In particular, my reading speed isn't very high (not fast enough to read longer subtitles yet when watching a movie wihtout pausing) and most of this is derived from the fact that there is unknown vocab / characters for which I either don't know or my recall speed isn't quick enough. As such, movies aren't enjoyable as well because I have to pause every other second. From a vocab perspective, I'm now ~3,500 into the ~5,000 vocab list for HSK7-9 and should be done HSK7-9 in the next 2 weeks. Note that this means just learning the word and definition NOT being able to actively use the word. My plan is to allow active learning to occur once I see it in context via books / movies enough time but right now I need to be able to read / understand enough and read / understand at sufficient speed in order for books / movies comprehensive to occur. I"ve been punching out on average ~100-150 new words per day over the last month (some days I'll do 0 new words, some days I'll do up to 400 new words). Note that learning vocab (by HSK 7-9) definitely becomes incredibly faster past HSK5 and 6 and that's why I'm able to maintain the very high pace. The reason for this is that ~80-90% of vocab in HSK7-9 is just new words that use existing characters that you already know. As such, learning new vocab is very easy if you know the underlying base characters, ranging from the very obvious (e.g., the word streetlight is literally just street + light) to being a bit more subtle (in which case, they are almost like memonics). Most of the new learning is really on new characters of which there is an upper limit to how many characters there are (roughly, HSK1-6 is ~2000 characters and ~7-9 is a further ~1000 characters, and based on what I've seen you need ~3500 to recognise the majority (99.9%) of characters in a book / movie). Hence, my goal is within the next 1-2 month to fully learn all normal characters. After I'm done with HSK9, I am going to focused on the drama subtitles words that were provided in another post in the forum (by my calculation, there are ~15000 words in that list and 2300 unique characters, but only ~250 characters not present in the HSK1-9 that I am in the process of completing). My Anki review stats below - note on a good day, I'm probably spending about 4 hours on Anki to learn 400 new words (noting that I think Anki has a loss of about 1/3 of the time due to minor procrastination or whatnot perhaps not recording time, actual time actually translates to 6 hours in front of Anki). So far, I have struggled to spend more than that 6 hours on Anki a day as my brain gets fatigued so I have not been able to study much more than this a day yet, despite wanting to punch out 12 hours+ a day on Chinese. So far once I hit that limit per day, I have no option but to watch simple Chinese movies or do other things. I was testing trying a Chinese teacher but to be honest with my current focus I didn't find it much more useful than using ChatGPT and so have put that off for now. Note my speaking is probably still like HSK 4 level. Personally I'm better at focusing at one thing and finishing it up than trying to improve multiple skills all at once. I also signed up for HSK 5 level test in mid November but given tests are not my main focus (being native level is), let's actually see what happens there. Would welcome any feedback on my study methods and how to get more hours in once the brain is fatigued.

If quality clay is the only criteria, I would first ask what your budget is. You're unlikely to strike gold at thrift stores and even more so at Taobao etc. It is perhaps counter-intuitive, but buying a vintage pot is often the most affordable way to get a pot with good clay (and by good I mean that it has a benefitial, or at least non-detrimental, effect on the tea). Typically the green label pots (1978-82) of Factory 1 strike a great balance between (relative) affordability and clay quality. Unfortunately it is not always trivial to identify the fakes (I'd steer clear of Ebay) and trustworthy vendors such as moodyguy charge a premium. But the sales section of e.g. teaforum.org can be a great place to pick one up for a reasonable price For modern stuff... Really the market is just flooded with low-quality additive laden (but sometimes amazing looking) pots. Always avoid the ornamental stuff. Personally I'd recommend buying from someone like Teas We Like, Essence of Tea or RealZiSha.

No. It's very common to use an ancient name to address a certain city in a Chinese context. There are times when artists do creations under the name of masters with great celebrity. 徐 is a common family name of Jiangsu province so it's actually hard to say who's the actually creator of this pot.

Bravo! This is the sort of thing that almost never happens when you don't speak the language. It enriches a solo trip so much! Once on a long-distance bus in West China I struck up a conversation with two grad students, who were traveling from Chongqing to their home near Changsha for a national holiday. They absolutely insisted that I get off with them so they could treat me to a hot pot meal that showcased local specialties which were in season for only a short time. My schedule was flexible, so I accepted their kind invitation and had a most memorable detour. I'm convinced that was cosmic reward for about a thousand hours of dry SRS vocab building drills and 500 hours of sentence grammar exercise.

I'd say you're doing quite well as a foreign learner who don't really have a knowledge of Chinese. The next step is to balance the size of different parts of a character and to balance the size of different characters. In the first work, the vertical stroke of 亻 seems to be to short compared with the 弗 part, while the marked vertical stroke of the 弗 part seems to be to long compared with the whole character. In the second work, the circled part is too vacant. You could elongate the stroke I marked so that the whole character becomes more balanced. And here's some subtle part of maobi-controlling: when writing those strokes ending with a shape of triangle, you are to control the force of writing so that the triangle shape is smoothly formed by the nib. The end of your strokes are scattered, that means that the force you gave to the pen is either to strong or to weak. The end of those strokes are expected to be as sharp as the tip of a knife. It is actually a very difficult skill to learn. Many native learners do this badly at first as well. I think maybe you could find some experts at the department of sinology or Chinese language from your local universities, if any. I think an accessible expert helps you most - It's hard to learn any kind of painting or calligraphy without hand-to-hand instruction I think. In native context, mimicking the masterpieces of famous calligraphers is a very important part of learning calligraphy, so I find the characters written by a famous calligrapher, Yan Zhenqing, for you. The are special dictionary of Chinese calligraphy actually but of course they are written in Chinese so It could be hard for you to use them. I think a basic knowledge of Chinese may helps you go further.

>>Temu's prices are quite amazing, but I suspect the first order may be subsidised by Temu, later orders may not be as cheap. << My husband has been ordering little gadgets from Temu for more than a year. The prices do not go up over time. I don't get it, because sometimes the prices barely even cover the cost of mailing! Delivery is dependable and we have never had a problem with merchandise quality.

https://english.www.gov.cn/news/202411/22/content_WS67407351c6d0868f4e8ed533.html Pretty cool. They added 9 other countries too, mostly small ones, except Japan. Very easy for Europeans to go to China now. USA, UK and Canada are the three ones not on the list yet....

A set of vocabulary books for HSK 7-9 have come out too. They're part of a set called 国际中文教育中文水平等级标准·词汇速记速练手册, which have lists for all the HSK levels. I couldn't help myself and bought them on Taobao. They arrived so I made a little video about their contents and put it up here for anyone who might be interested what they are like. The TLDR is they are basically a list of the new vocab in alphabetic order, divided into two books (A-M, N-Z). They've included collocations and fill in the blank questions on most pages as well as at the end of every "unit", which I thought was a nice touch. A quick comparison against the vocab lists that have been OCR'ed (which I admittedly downloaded quite a while ago) showed that some vocab in the books is not in the OCR'ed lists, like 吃不上 and 鹏程万里. It seems to largely correlate though, and probably isn't a big deal.

Thanks for being my rubber duck (see rubber duck debugging technique). We just put in a Chinese SIM, enabled roaming, stopped WiFi, force-stopped the Galaxy Store, cleared all its data and reloaded it. After initialisation, and seeing the Chinese apps we disabled roaming and turned the WiFi back on.

just hit them with the ɕ next time

I think comparing Chinese and English pronunciations in this way is only useful for explaining to the sound to a "layman" who is not studying Chinese, but wants some simple idea of how a Chinese word is pronounced. I always find it jarring when Western newscasters pronounce Chinese names🤣

@Flickserve--I have admired that strategy of yours for many years now and gradually adopted it myself, learning and practicing my hobbies completely in Chinese. Chinese tea, Chinese cooking, Tai Chi, gym workouts with a coach/trainer (in Kunming,) etc. You have taken it further than I ever did, into the realm of teaching others those skills in Chinese. I sure that final step would have been extremely helpful in solidifying and refining use of the new terms and using them in two-way interaction. ETA: The other thing I had intended to comment was that even when one doesn't achieve as high a level of skill in the sport or hobby activity as you did, one can still reap significant language benefits. In Tai Chi, for example, I was a "forever beginner" but still found "practicing in Chinese" helpful.

An alternative method to learning to help using Chinese to a native level is to learn a skill under a native Chinese speaker and then using the language to teach that skill in Chinese. I used to learn badminton in Cantonese under a coach. A lot of the more technical terms I could not understand and I would have to have someone translate for me. Through the process of repetition, that completed the first stage. I got quite good and decided to try for the coaching course which was again, all in Chinese, I had to get someone to translate a lot of the manual and that pushed me through another level. Then I ended up teaching some badminton using Cantonese. Because I would have full Cantonese discussions with the coach especially when it came to discussing tactics, there's a lot of two way interaction. I don't do it for mandarin because basically I am based in HK where everyone speaks Cantonese but if I were in mainland China, that's probably something I would do combining my interests in sports with language.

Anki is so nice and measurable, though. All those hard data! You can track your progress perfectly! But I agree with Jan that Anki should be a means, not an end. OP, why do you want to learn how to read, what kind of texts do you want to be able to read? Go and practice that. Novels, non-fiction books, newspapers, policy documents, it doesn't matter: read what you want to learn how to read, and extract your new vocab from those texts. If you want to read about developments in insulation materials, there's no point in first learning five different words for 'sad', and vice versa. Of course, if what you really want to learn to read is subtitles, you're on exactly the right track.

A friend of mine had a tactic that worked well for her: leave the big heavy carry-on with the people who are seeing you off (if present, of course), so that the attendant at the check-in desk doesn't see it. Then, carry the bag as if it is not heavy at all and in fact quite light. Another tactic is to put the small heavy things in your pockets. Or to plead with the relevant attendants that you're a diligent student of their beautiful language, can't find these books back home, so can you pretty please bring them with you on the plane. Good luck with the finding & carrying!

Did a handicraft workshop today and the teacher was a Chinese woman surnamed Ben. I had never seen that as a Chinese surname, so I asked her afterwards how it is written, and it's 贲. It is indeed very rare, she said, not even one of the Hundred Surnames.

I can give a negative recommendation. I was in Taipei recently and heard Eslite is the best bookshop in the city. Don't bother. This is the main location of a well-known chain. It's quite large, has a wide variety of Chinese and English books, and to be fair is pretty good for the most part. However, they don't offer much for learners of Chinese. It was pretty disappointing, really. So many books, but so few for Chinese learners.

Can I suggest adding "daily reading" in there?

Hi, I'd like to start a Baldur's Gate 3 roleplaying group in simplified chinese. Looking for people of all levels, we're gonna be 4 players overall (including myself of course! ) The idea is pretty straightforward, we each play a character of our choosing, that character may (or may not) reflect our chinese language knowledge, for instance, I had this idea where someone who is more of a beginner can maybe play a slow half-orc who doesn't speak well, and such; whereas someone more advanced can be the party leader (I kinda think that would flow better). We can even be 4 slow half-orcs for I care lol... to me that sounds fun 😃 Regardless, this is not for native speakers, it's really for beginners-intermediates to practice, goof around and learn how to express themselves. Atmosphere is chill, pace is slow, the gameplay is not about reaching the end and advancing the story, it's about practicing chinese and roleplaying. The setting of the game itself can stay English and we can use discord as the role-play platform. I tried a variation of it with AI, it was great! Except the part where I have to constantly keep sharing screenshots with it and explain the situation, which is exhausting. With real players it should be a lot more fun. Let me know if you're interested 😃 -Alice

Learning words is not a black and white thing, the more you encounter and use a word the better you "know" it. In order to consume native content, you need to know many words, but a very basic knowledge is enough (pronunciation + translated main definition). Some people like to learn the words without any context, some with some context (this is me, I always have one example sentence in my flashcards), and some like to go more in-depth with multiple sentences/texts and grammar lessons. And depending on the person what appears to be the fastest route is not always the fastest in the long run!

Open to thoughts here but my goal here is to master Chinese at a native level in the fastest time possible (I can already grasp general gist of things but I'd like to really take that to the next step with more infrequent vocab). If I am just "absorbing things" then yes, I will learn, but the rate of language acquisition is significantly slower than if I am active learning. I think this maybe works better for words that appear frequently enough but at the level of HSK7-9 words which don't really appear more than 10 times per million words, I would literally need to watch like 100 movies to learn 100 new words by osmosis. Reading would be somewhat faster as I can look up words but still inferior in speed to active learning (for active Anki learning, I calculated I spend about 1-1.5 minutes in total Anki time per new word including re-reviewing time before it enters mature vocabulary). I could learn those hundred words in a fraction of the time via active learning (a matter of a few hours) even if a lot of them don't really stick or aren't in active vocab until I see them in the right context.

Does it cost anything to apply for this scholarship? If not, I would just apply anyway, and send a copy of your 学生证 instead of a pre-graduation certificate. The worst that can happen is you get rejected.

When living in China, I just tried to be as good a person as I could, without regard to any special national characteristics. No catchy slogans needed.

hahaha absolutely As someone who has mostly learned outside of China (I lived there for 6 months as a beginner), it felt very validating to realize that yes, what I've been learning is actual Chinese. It is weird because of course I know it is, but there is a big difference between understanding a podcast and understanding what an actual human being is saying to you. Same for speaking, it felt surreal the first few times I said something more complicated than "where is the toilet?" and people actually understood me. Here is a random observation: there were a few people that approached me to speak in English, which I don't remember ever happening in my previous trips from 5+ years ago.

You would probably be better off finding a japanese person to read the textbook for you. Cassette players are incredibly rare now.

I think most foreigners learning Chinese characters have enough difficulty as it is without complicating it by introducing two sets of characters. For those who persevere long enough to gain a workable mastery of Chinese, switching from one set to the other is not difficult. I never especially learned traditional characters, but I am able to read traditional texts without much difficulty. Furthermore, I learned characters without an in depth knowledge of their aetiology. Whilst the stories behind the characters may be a matter of interest to some, I don't think it is necessary (and may even be a distraction) to actually memorising characters. Just knowing the basics such as 氵 comes from 'water' and 亻 comes from 'person' and so on covers most of what is of practical value.

So, there's a minor meme called "Be the American Japan believes you are!" Since memes are meant to spread, I'm stealing it and mutating it. But it got me to thinking, what does this mean , exactly? The Japan meme is just a bunch of funny photos of a broad-chested, necktied politician called "Armstrong" who, true to his name, has strong arms and does a lot of strong man things and shouts a lot. I mean, I'm an American, I've certainly heard my share of this, but I find myself at a loss here. I find myself doing something I don't do much of, getting philosophical. After all, I am an adult man who has pretty much decided that China is my life. It's replaced much of my personality such that I feel like a bore when talking with folks from back home because every topic just becomes "but in China blah blah blah" and I'm sure probably nobody cares. But later this year I'm applying for my permanent residency and if I get that then it's on. I'm not the kind of laowai who longs to be Chinese or says cringe stuff like 我是新中国人. I had already accepted that I'll never be Chinese and probably shouldn't want to be, either. I had hit on the idea of "be the est laowai you can be" already. And this is no joke. I am talking about a slogan and a thesis statement for life. Well, my life, anyway. I am a Texan, and one of the reasons I got into barbecue cooking was to be as stereotypical as possible, in the most positive way possible. I mean, who doesn't like showing up to a backyard barbecue with mouthwatering meats cooked to perfection? Well, besides the local laowai, who mostly no-showed after promising to attend over and over, which is one of the reasons I quit doing them a while back. It was just discouraging to go to all this work only to have people treat it like an unwanted chore they had to complete that day. Chinese people liked it, sometimes. And I liked doing it, it gave me a great way of paying people back for all the wonderful hospitality Chinese are famous for without it being overly familiar indoor cooking they might have been to shy to attend. And let's be honest, it's a roll of the dice to attend any random foreigner's home-cooked meal. I've had some food that I was promised was the best in the world only to find out that it was...well, edible. But barbecue, everyone knows what that is. And I got to be pretty danged good at it. Let's face it, meat and flame aren't really that hard to get right. Add a few techniques like brining or smoking and you've got a winner. But back to the point, what does "be the American China thinks you are" actually mean? Or, perhaps a better question would be "what would it mean to live your life in a way that fulfills (in a non-ridiculous, welcome way, positive Chinese stereotypes about Americans? I don't mean wear a cowboy hat every day and import a block-long Cadillac like Otto in " Fish Called Wanda". (although I did once know a Chinese man who did that). Now that I think of it, Kevin Kline provides a good negative example of what I'm talking about. He was specifically cast in the movie to be an ass and an unsympathetic buttmonkey that the audience gets to feel superior to. Jamie Lee Curtis' lecture to him about the central message of Buddhism not being "every man for himself and the London Underground not being a revolutionary movement resonated so well with Hollywood that Kevin Kline won a rare Best Supporting Actor Oscar for a comedic role. I'm talking about the polar opposite of that. And a follow-up question would be, what would I have to do to achieve these dual goals? Be the best laowai I can be and be the American China expects me to be? 1. Get a lot better at Chinese, of course. 2. Study more about China, I do that too. 4. Shout a lot. Pass. 3. Be a big strong man. Well, all of us can use more physical fitness but if I was going to be a muscle man I could have been that by now, so I think we can strike this one off the list. Maybe I really should split this into two threads but I've talked enough already. And for any of you who are wondering about what a weird question this is and if I have recently suffered a head injury? Yes, you are right. I recently had a concussion (I received prompt medical treatment and have mostly recovered, thank you!) and have been rather off lately. But whatever, I am embracing the madness. it's true, it really is liberating. I can see why the Joker likes it so much. So if anyone has any good answers I would really appreciate them. Especially from this crowd, this site has got some of the best, most veteran posters of any discussion board of any kind I use.

I just came back from the trip. Overall it was a fantastic experience, this was my first time in China with a more mature understanding of its history and culture, so I was able to enjoy things on a deeper level than when I was younger. My Chinese is also significantly better now, so the interactions were much richer and I even made a couple of friends. The food was also amazing, and @abcdefg 大盘鸡 was indeed one of my favorite meals! I was alone and spent 950 euros (+ plane ticket + gifts). Here is what I ended up doing: day 1: beijing Plane was delayed so I didn't have time to do anything. - night train to yinchuan day 2: yinchuan I didn't visit the movie studio you mentioned @abcdefg because it's not really my thing, but every taxi driver told me I should go, so it's definitely one of the prides of the city. The city itself is not very interesting, although there seems to be some nice parks I didn't have time to go to. - 贺兰山岩 (Rock Paintings of Helan Mountain): I really enjoyed it, and I can see kids particularly liking it because it's pretty fun to find the paintings. The museum is also nice. - 西夏王陵 (Western Xia Imperial Tombs): It has a great museum on the xixia dynasty, and the scenery is beautiful. The tombs themselves are in pretty poor shape but overall I recommend it. day 3: zhongwei I didn't have time to visit the city. - Tengger Desert: This was my first time in a desert so I really enjoyed it, I don't know how it compares to others. - Yongtai: I hired a taxi for 550 yuans to take me there. It's not too far away (1h45 one way) but the tolls are pretty expensive so I ended up paying more than I expected, but it was worth it, thank you very much for the recommendation @suMMit, definitely one of the highlights of the trip. - night train to xining day 4: xining The city is nice, particularly the muslim district. I regret not going to the museum, apparently it's very good. - Kumbum Monastery: The temples are nice, and it is interesting to see a functioning monastery. day 5: 坎布拉 kanbula national geopark Absolutely stunning section of the 黃河 river, and with very few visitors (almost none). To get there you need a long-distance bus from xining (30yuan) + a taxi to the entrance (20yuan), and the ticket is pretty expensive (170yuan), but it is worth it. A guy told me that the huge Buddha statue they are building up in the mountains is a project started by the Kumbum monastery, but it depends on private funds (the state won't help) and they are struggling to find any, so it's been on hold for the last 10+ years. I am sharing this only because I am very proud I understood it. day 6: chaka lake This might have been my favorite non-dunhuang day, it is beautiful and very interesting. I am happy I followed the advice here and didn't stop by the qinghai lake, which is also beautiful but you get a very thorough glimpse at it on the road to chaka. Upon arriving at the hotel in Chaka (Wulan Novelty Inn, booked with Ctrip) they told me foreigners were not allowed, so I had to go to another one that surprisingly didn't try to fleece me despite my situation. The people in the entire trip, but specially in Qinghai, were very nice. day7: road to zhangye This was a bit of a wasted day, I ended up taking the same chaka-xining bus because I didn't manage to find an alternative route. Then a xining-zhangye train. Upon arriving at zhangye I had a very nice massage + cupping at 希秀盲人按摩. day 8: zhangye The city is small but nice, there is a nice museum. - Giant Buddha Temple: Big buddha indeed. - Zhangye Danxia Landform Geographical Park: The colors were a bit pale because it was windy so the sand blocked the sun, but it was still stunning. - night train to dunhuang day 9: dunhuang The city is small but has a nice night market. - Crescent lake: I really enjoyed this, the sand is much softer than in Tengger so it's much more difficult to move around, and the dunes are much higher. After an hour of hiking I was completely alone. - Mogao Grottoes: Stunning, but frustrating. Not because of the price (258yuan), but because you only visit 8 caves and barely spend 5 minutes per cave. But of course they do that for preservation purposes, so I understand. day 10: dunhuang I booked a group tour to visit the western side of dunhuang. This was my favorite day and the main reason behind the trip. - Dunhuang old city: Absolute garbage, everything is new and doesn't really make any sense, there is even a replica of the greek parthenon... - Western Thousand Buddha Caves: Most of the art is from the 回鹘, so it's a nice complement to Mogao, but obviously not as spectacular. - 阳关: Beautiful views. - 玉门关 + 汉长城遗址 + 河仓城遗址: Stunning ruins. - Yadan National Geologic Park: This was so weird, like being in a different planet! day 11: jiayuguan I didn't have time to visit the city, but it seemed pretty ugly with plenty of factories. - Weijin tombs: One of the highlights of the trip, the paintings are beautiful. There was literally nobody there, which I don't understand. - Great Wall: Nice I guess, but heavily restored and the views are not that beautiful. - Jiayuguan fort: Like @Jan Finster said, not really worth it since most of it is also restored. But the sunset was nice and you get a nice view of the terrain. It is indeed a pretty narrow section of the Hexi corridor between the two mountain chains, so it makes sense why the Ming started their great wall there. - night train to tianshui day 12: tianshui I didn't have time to visit the city. - Maijishan Grottoes: Beautiful grottoes, but in very bad shape because they are pretty exposed to the elements. Also, I don't recommend it if you have fear of heights! Or insects haha. - Fuxi temple: For such an important temple that draws so many believers, the statues of fuxi are pretty ugly. day 13: lanzhou I spent the day with a local I had befriended in zhangye, she took me to the Gansu Provincial Museum (very nice, I really wanted to go there ever since @suMMit shared a picture of the bronze horses), the iron bridge, and a couple of statues I wanted to see. Very nice way to end the trip. - night train to beijing day 14: beijing I only had half a day, so ended up just buying gifts. I tried both the mei lanfang theatre and the changan grand theatre, but sadly none had an opera show that evening. day 15: plane

Might, just might, be a good idea to let somebody know the name, author's name, and place of publication of the texts and tapes you're talking about. That might help your cause immensely... Just sayin'... TBZ

Yes, I found Ma Boyong too - that book was in a Best Sellers'page, but today it had moved somewhere else. Searching for 马伯庸 brings up all books with 马 in the author's name. @Lu was the one looking for 马伯庸, but he publishes so many books it's probably near impossible to find a particular title outside a major bookseller. Temu's prices are quite amazing, but I suspect the first order may be subsidised by Temu, later orders may not be as cheap. It has some useful kitchen gadgets and everything else under the sun. I don't know how it is in Spain, UK deliveries are quite good, a lot of stuff seems to be already in Europe and is delivered in a few days. If not already in Europe, it comes by surface mail but it only takes a few weeks.

I'm sorry for reviving this thread again, but I just wanted to say that I've been in Beijing for a whole week this month and could subsist ok with just plain old cash. I didn't get an eSim card or VPN, so my mobile phone was just my camera and the Pleco app, that can be used off line, thankfully. This seems to have changed recently. I bought the tickets in the official website one week prior to my visit, and they don't require foreigners to send any email. You just register with your passport number and name, and can pay with a Visa without problem.

An addition. This is not another version of 300 唐诗, but it seems to have some good answers to @jannesan's opening request. It sure offers hand-holding a-plenty. The book is 《昨夜星辰：高盛元的唐诗课》by 高盛元 (Gao Shengyuan), a teacher at a high school in Shengzhen whose elective course became so popular that it became a Bilibili video that received >1 million views (obviously not everyone in China has learnt classical poetry from the cradle), and eventually became this book. The book explains selected Tang poems organised into 12 basic themes, using a refreshingly clear direct language (though no child-speak!) and appears to break a few established conventions along the way. I'm not far into the reading, but I'm enjoying it and already found several gems. I find it quite inspiring and mind-opening, even if a little bit repetitive at times. Incidentally, this book came 4th in Douban's non-fiction Book of the Year 2023, and 高老师 received over half a million votes as the "dream Chinese language and literature teacher" (can't find a reference for this, but he would get my vote too). I've seen ebook versions in several places, including Weixin Dushu and Douban Cloud eBooks . I don't know about paper versions, the title is listed in Taobao and several book sellers including some from Taiwan. It should be easy to find, being a high school book. Amazon UK has 昨夜星辰 by Gao Shengyuan but IT IS NOT THE SAME BOOK! It is a book about 红楼梦 by the same author.

I think you should ask your tutor or the department responsible for the administration of foreign student for more details and advice. I think no university accept high school diploma as a valid diploma of application of master(regardless of the field of study) because, why? High school diploma doesn't seems to be a substitute of a bachelor's degree. There's a term called 同等学力 for Chinese students but I think this won't work for foreigners(And even for Chinese student this method of Master application needs a diploma from a junior college) Maybe the policy of your university just says that you cannot get a pre-grad certification if you haven't passed all the compulsory courses or you have some courses failed. I think only your school could give you more information and advice.

I agree with this. On my trip, I read about QH lake and told my wife I'm not going to pay for a ticket to see a lake, seen enough lakes. So, I said let's take the smaller road that runs right next to the lake for like 2 hours as we head towards Chaka. We did this and there were plenty of places to pull over and play around by the lake, see Tibetan monuments and stuff for free. Chaka lake was pretty cool and worth it to me, does not look like any lake I had ever seen before and you can walk around in it, pretty fun. Also after reading about Jiayuguan, I skipped it. Yumenguan was really good, I didn't see any need to waste time or money with Jiayuguan. There is also Yandan natl Geopark that could be very easily coupled with Yumenguan, I think its about 30 min away and can be arranged together. I'd have gone to Yandan, but we ran out of time. Yes. We stayed in a Yurt (glamping)walking distance from the Zhangye geopark. Cheap and nice yurt, one of my favorite accommodations on the whole trip. Lots of restaurants nearby. You could actually consider saving Qinghai and Ningxia for a future trip and just going straight to Gansu. I think there are enough things to see there for 2 weeks if you were willing to go off the beaten path a bit, like Yongtai ancient town which was a highlight for me, but hard to get to without wheels and not much facilities there for tourists: There were a bunch of little places we went in Gansu that were interesting , and even more that I would liked to have gone, but we ran out of time. We passed by bunch of low key very old wall sections along the highway, but again out of time. If you search on Chinese map app like A-map or Baidu map, or even C.trip you can see what is interesting and feasible by train/bus. Here a few random(there are many more, not recommending them, just saying whats out there) screenshots of Gansu from A-map(搞得）and c-trip: If you did decide to go to Qinghai, I thought(guessing) one or both of these roads might be a beautiful drive from Chaka to Zhangye(I considered it, but we didn't go that way): Anyway, just some ideas.

Second half of October is a great time to visit. Weather is favorable and you will miss crowded holidays. Wanted to ask, if you don't mind, is this a first trip to China or have you been before? The reason for asking is that my priorities might be different on a first trip, at which time I would "hit the high spots" to gain an overall flavor of China, whereas on subsequent trips I would be more focused on exploring places that are off the usual tourist trail. Hope you have a wonderful trip! You have done the right thing by beginning your planning well in advance. I would nail down a plane ticket ASAP if you haven't already done so because prices will rise the closer you get to your departure date, generally speaking. Volume of travel to and from China is still way below what it was before Covid, many flights have been cancelled. Cannot count on "last minute bargains."

I'm in Beijing at the moment, doing a very touristy week. I'm Dutch, not American or even English, but I have noticed no hostility at all. Most people are just friendly and helpful, at the Great Wall a few tourists from faraway regions were amazed at the talking monkey/foreigner, and that's it. Very, very few foreigners though. We've been to Sanlitun, the Summer Palace, the Wall, and I think I could have counted the foreigners we saw. The number increased beyond counting only today at the Forbidden City because there were two tour groups of foreigners there.