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.

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 used to dread having to memorize so many classifiers but I've found that it's not that bad.

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!

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.

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!

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.

I think learning Chinese saved my brain from becoming AI slop

A year ago I graduated and got my first corporate job at a consulting firm. Every single day since all I've heard is AI, AI, AI, use more AI, AI, AI, etc... Like I was used to some AI talk since I did an IT related major but damn at least at uni the teachers were interested in us learning and understanding the material.

At work it feels like thinking using our brains is the absolute worst thing we could ever do.

This September I finally went back to learning Chinese after having abandoned it years ago.

It might just be a personal bias but I actually feel like my brain is more agile and I have less brain fog now.

Actually thinking and actively making an effort to learn something new is the best. It's regarding, it's good for your health and you get to be good at something new!

Plus! Since I choose to go to in-person classes I also get to meet new people with shared interests!

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

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.

I looked up 學 in Pleco after seeing it in the Integrated Chinese 1-1 workbook. I thought this workbook was simplified only, so was surprised to see multiple variants of this character.

So my very dumb question about Pleco is:

Does the top line of the screenshot show the simplified character, followed by the traditional in parentheses?

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?

Hey Guys,

I am part of a team running a marketplace platform specializing in Learning Chinese. We have mostly been B2C, so people can check out tutors and book sessions with them.

However, we are looking to also do B2B. What sort of businesses do you feel might actually need that? This is either as part of optional employee development or as part of business needs. Do you have any ideas in mind?

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

I'd love to see a monthly “Show & Tell” thread where members could share FREE resources they've created, whether it's learning tools, YouTube videos, flashcards, FREE websites, or anything else that might help fellow learners.

I'm sure there are some fantastic resources we're missing simply because people are afraid of being accused of self-promotion or having their posts removed. I have had posts removed and it is humiliating when your heart is in the right place.

I understand the need to prevent spam, but shouldn't we encourage people who genuinely want to contribute something useful?

A dedicated monthly thread, with clear guidelines and no sales pitches, seems like a great middle ground.

Would anyone else welcome something like this? Or is something like this already here and I missed it?

I have exam on 7 nov, paper based, this is last tine with 2.0 i want to pass to get my degree

Can someone share some tips?

I know 1 to 460 vocab, out of 600,

I nvr wrote any chinese chracter, just recognize and practiced

Your help will be appreciated

Thank you

I am just not into learning hsk materials. Feels like I am learning words that I will never use on everyday speech. So I am kinda stuck.

Then this idea came to my mind. Would it be ok to learn this way and can I still be intermediate level with this method?

I am currently learning them and try to use them in a sentence. So I try to learn them in a context.

What do you guys think?

For me it is 一杯珍珠奶茶 🧋HAHHA

I've been looking for the one with the blue bird logo, but I couldn't find it 😭😭

I saw this app that's relatively new called Merry Mandarin, and I've been using it for a few days and it seems to work. However I am concerned because a lot of the english in the apps seems to be ai-generated. They don't tell you what is ai and what isn't and I'm afraid that if they generate chinese w/ai then I could be learning wrong and building bad habits. Does anybody know of this app and if it's trustworthy or not?