I've been studying Chinese on and off for 15 years, always trying to keep the cost as low as possible. I actually spent some of my study time hunting down affordable resources instead of studying Chinese! Free trials, YouTube channels, websites, apps, books, you name it.

What frustrated me was finding promising resource lists that were just walls of links with no descriptions, many times with more than a third of the links broken. I wished for the kind of directory that would actually deliver, saving me time, money, and frustration.

So I kept collecting and organizing what I found. Over the years, that grew to 1,000+ resources across more than 100 categories. As a retired legal secretary, organization and writing descriptions of things comes naturally to me. In 2018, I moved my collection to a website to make it easier to navigate and share. Every resource has a description and is labeled free, paid, or free trial. I also regularly check and repair broken links.

Since self-promotion is understandably a concern here, I want to be completely transparent.

My website has no ads, no paywall, and just two clearly labeled affiliate links. Those links (currently on 2 pages of a huge site) have earned me a grand total of 86 cents since 2018! 😂 I'm not monetized on social media either. There are optional donation links, but donations over the years haven't even covered two months of hosting, much less the other costs of maintaining the site. These costs are the only reason the donations links exist. If I could do it free I would.

Like all legitimate resource directories, some resources are paid, but I have no financial relationship with their providers. I'm not selling an app, steering people toward paid products, and never intend to put anything behind a paywall. I will shut the website down first. I simply want to give learners like me what I so desperately wished I had and retirement has given me the time to create.

This truly has been a labor of love for years.

Mods and others, please take a look, click around, and judge for yourself whether it's genuinely useful:

https://mandarinmania.com/resources/

Enjoy!

Hey all, I just started HSK2 and I’ve been recently pretty self conscious about my hand writing — kept thinking its illegible. As a result of this repetitive thoughts echoing in my head, I decided to post here and ask locals and fellow learners instead.

Hi all,

I'm around a month into my Chinese journey and so far everything has been smooth sailing. I cruised through HelloChinese elementary 1 and now I'm a little under halfway through elementary 2 with no major issues. (With understanding grammar that is, I'm nowhere near able to hold conversations or recall half of what I've learned on the spot). But I'm getting really stuck on 的, specifically in the instance of the photo I've put below. Of course I understand how it can give possession, but when it comes to describing locations, or describing situations- I'm seriously at a loss. Like: 礼物在电视旁边的桌子下, I just don't understand.

I may just accept this is one of those things that I'll begin to understand as time and immersion progress but I'd like to be able to understand it conceptually. If anyone could help that'd be great- thanks!

I found this app here called LanLan to learn chinese doomscrolling and I dont know how to turn off pinyin. If youre the maker please DM me.

Here’s a short diary about my Tuesday morning, with some useful everyday Chinese expressions.

You’ll learn how to talk about your morning routine, breakfast, going to work, and the weather in Chinese.

If you’re learning Mandarin, try reading the Chinese first and see how much you can understand before checking the pinyin and English translation!

Chinese learners: How would you describe your own morning in Chinese?

I often have time when moving between sites at work, around 20 minutes with little notice where I only have my phone to hand. I’d love to have something easily accessible that I can use to learn during these times - does anyone have any suggestions?

I am currently studying at HSK 2 level through a local university, if that’s at all relevant. I’ve seen a huge number of apps and sites promoted on here, but it’s difficult to tell which are just someone’s vibe-coded cash grab, and which are actually beneficial to use.

Edit: I don’t want you to promote your own app to me, I want to hear from other learners.

For Mandarin speakers! I was reading subtitles at the time. Does it have any ring to it? Which country's accent is it similar to?

Also, please feel free to share your thoughts. Thank you!

Let's try a different kind of challenge this time.

The structure is 越……越…… (yuè… yuè…), which means “the more…, the more…”

Make up your own sentence using this structure. It can be something simple or a longer, more complicated sentence. Challenge yourself based on your current level.

You can write in Chinese characters or pinyin. If you're a beginner, a simple sentence is totally fine. If you're more advanced, try making a longer sentence.

Take a moment to think about it, say it out loud if you can, and then leave your sentence in the comments. I'm curious to see what everyone comes up with!

Hi! I'm running a linguistic experiment for my final project to find out if people with no mandarin knowledge can understand the differences between 青 and 绿, which both mean green in chinese, compared to mandarin speakers with lived experience of the terms. I would love to know what you think, and if you're interested, I made a fun quiz you can check out! Link: https://form.typeform.com/to/YdBctSJa

I’m flying to Chongqing in a few weeks for a vacation. My primary goal is to work on improving my Chinese, especially spoken. I’m around HSK 4 or 5, but don’t have a lot of speaking practice.

I have already booked a hotel and decided to look into finding a tutor or someone who can help me and give me feedback. So far my search has been more difficult than I imagined. I found Keats, but I feel like it’s more than I really need. I don’t need a place to stay, I just need someone to meet up with for a few hours in a restaurant, hotel lobby, or some other public space.

Does anyone have a recommendation for how I could organize something like this? I think I’ll look into tandem partners and language exchanges, but I think it would be a good idea to find someone who can explain things more in depth and to be honest I would like to speak as little English as possible during my trip, to really try for as much immersion as possible

I am aware that this question was more or less asked but I can't seem to find an answer that satisfies me so I apologize for that. But as the title sais : can someone ,take a person from mainland China who speaks mandarin and writes simplified, read a taiwanese book written in traditional characters? I am aware of the LANGUAGE barrier, mandarin mainland and taiwan mandarin are 2 different languages but apparently they can understand eachother in written form but also not really but it depends-

It's confusing. If a person writes their book with their language and pronunciation in mind (mandarin Taiwanese) and a person from mainland wants to read won't that be also reading another language? I hope it makes sense😭 (yes I impulse bough my favorite book in traditional characters from taiwan how did you know?)

hey everyone! i'm from brazil and just starting mandarin from absolute zero

i have a few chinese friends and i'd really love to be able to talk with them a bit in their language, even if it's just simple everyday stuff. so speaking and reading casual texts matter way more to me than handwriting characters

i work full time so i've got maybe an hour a day, sometimes less

i've seen the usual recs (anki, hellochinese, pimsleur etc) but i'm kinda lost on where to start. should i nail pinyin and tones first or jump into characters right away? and when did you start actually talking to natives?

if you were starting over today what would you do differently? any tips appreciated, 谢谢!

Hello everybody

I've been a long term lurker and a newbie having some questions. I finished the old HSK 2 level 1.5 years ago and then had a break from studying chinese for multiple reasons. However, I'm back now, repeating the old stuff and planing on moving on with my studies with a certified chinese teacher, starting in december.

Where I live there is only one university nearby which offers HSK exams and I'm planning doing my first HSK exam by november 2027 (HSK 3.0 new exams).

So, here's my study plan / per week

- 2 lessons of Chinese with a chinese language teacher

- 3 hours of repeating vocabulary and learning new ones

- 2-3 hours of exeecising with apps (chinese skills, super chinese)

- 1 hours of handwriting practice

Do you think it would make sense to go for the HSK 3 level by next november or should I aim for HSK 2?

Thanks in advance - looking forwad for you answers. 😊

Can anyone help me with the Fuzhounese (福州話) romanization of 富貴? I found hó for 富 on
https://fuzhounese.org, but I couldn’t find the reference for 貴.

Since the title is a bit click baity the tl;dr is that he studied some Chinese in high school. When he woke from the coma, he could only access his Chinese.

A similar story from this sub 12 years ago: 94 year old Chinese ex-English teacher wakes up from stroke speaking only English

I just started studying sinology and thought about going to China next summer for about three months (planning to do a Chinese course, although I will have studied it two semesters at this point).

Do you guys recommend doing it, considering it would be quite expensive for me and how did your Chinese improve during this time period?

As me and my 2 friends, we want to learn the Chinese language for free from good and interesting app.

That actually works and helps to learn and read the language.. is anyone know good app for that and tried, plz recommend us

It's nice that Chinese offers such a simple verb for this. It feels so clunky to say "I was mistaken that" in English.