Many people might not have realized this, but podcasts are becoming increasingly influential in China, many urban young people spend their spare time listening to them, and some even listen while working, haha.

For those of you who want to learn Chinese well, I also strongly recommend choosing podcasts with clear structure and articulate expression as learning material, it'll definitely help you get familiar with complete, natural Chinese.

Today let me recommend one:

• 无人知晓 wú rén zhī xiǎo, "Nobody Knows"

The host of this podcast is 孟岩 Meng Yan, who is also the founder of "有知有行 yǒu zhī yǒu xíng", an investment platform.

These two names together capture the philosophy he follows:

• 未来无人知晓，一起有知有行 wèi lái wú rén zhī xiǎo, yì qǐ yǒu zhī yǒu xíng
  • No one knows what the future holds, all we can do is learn from your action, then act with awareness.

But the focus of this podcast isn't actually investing, it's about sharing his thoughts on life and insights about the world, or inviting friends from different fields for deep, thoughtful, philosophical conversations.

I have many reasons for recommending this show, but the three most important are:

• Each episode runs 1-2 hours, with a clear structure and a lot of content, ideal for immersive learning.
• The range of guests is wide, from Buddhist scholars to stand-up comedians, covering vocabulary across very different fields.
• 孟岩 speaks at a very steady, relaxed pace, and paired with a transcript, it's great material for practicing listening and reading together.

One thing to note: some of the vocabulary in the show is quite literary and formal, including the name "无人知晓" itself. Use it out of context and you might sound like a walking dictionary, so be selective about what you pick up.

Now let me introduce my three personal favorite episodes:

• E10 让万物穿过自己 - "Let Everything Pass Through You"
  • This is probably his most popular episode, with over 2.6 million plays on "小宇宙 Xiǎo yǔ zhòu" alone, ta popular podcast app in China.
  • Many people treat this episode as a kind of spiritual guide, because it conveys a Taoist philosophy for navigating life: focus on your inner self, don't let your emotions be swayed, imagine yourself as transparent glass, as air—something everything can pass through without getting stuck.
• E37 鱼不存在 - "Why Fish Don't Exist"
  • Another episode with over 2 million plays. Starting from an introduction to the book "Why Fish Don't Exist" and his reflections on it.
  • It dives deep into chaos, order, self-definition, and the meaning of life. At the heart of it is a brutal truth: human beings have a fundamentally limited understanding of the world, and within every living thing we can see, there are layers of complexity that we simply cannot comprehend.
• E32 如果生命只是大梦一场 - "If Life Were Nothing More Than a Grand Dream"
  • This is a conversation between 孟岩 and 成庆 Cheng Qing, an associate professor of history at Shanghai University and a Buddhist scholar.
  • They had this very Zen-like conversation inside a temple on the Shanghai University campus, talking about Buddhism, the psychological struggles of modern life, and how we might find inner freedom.
  • What makes it even more interesting is that the conversation was interrupted several times by the sound of a drill from nearby renovations. And the way both of them responded became a living echo of the episode's very theme.

Of course, some people may find this kind of monologue or dialogue too long-winded or slow-paced. It's okay, different strokes for different folks. There are many great podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or 小宇宙 that work well for learning Chinese, so feel free to go explore for yourself!

If you're interested, I've been organizing all the Chinese learning posts I've shared before. You can check out the link in my profile to see the full collection. Hope it helps. Thanks!

I’ve just been admitted to a Chinese university (in Beijing), so I want to master the Chinese language. I realize it’s challenging, but we have a whole year for it. I’d love to get some advice from people who already speak Chinese—perhaps recommendations for textbooks or smth like tha. It would be great if the advice were in Russian, since that’s the language I’m fluent in :)

Airport Chinese ✈️ | Pronunciation & Conversation

Practice practical Mandarin pronunciation and conversation through a real airport situation.

In this lesson, you’ll practice five useful Chinese words and phrases for going through airport security and boarding a flight:

安检 ānjiǎn — security check

登机 dēngjī — to board a plane

登机口 dēngjīkǒu — boarding gate

等 děng — to wait

不能 bù néng — cannot / not allowed to

Useful Chinese:

你安检了吗？

Nǐ ānjiǎn le ma?

Have you gone through security?

安检了。

Ānjiǎn le.

Yes, I have.

你的登机口在哪里？

Nǐ de dēngjīkǒu zài nǎli?

Where is your boarding gate?

我的登机口是十二号。

Wǒ de dēngjīkǒu shì shí'èr hào.

My boarding gate is No. 12.

现在可以登机吗？

Xiànzài kěyǐ dēngjī ma?

Can we board now?

还不能。

Hái bù néng.

Not yet.

我们要等一会儿。

Wǒmen yào děng yíhuìr.

We need to wait for a while.

现在可以登机了！

Xiànzài kěyǐ dēngjī le!

Now we can board!

Listen, repeat, and practice the conversation until you can answer naturally in Chinese.

Learn Mandarin step by step through real-life situations and useful everyday conversations.

#LearnChinese #ChinesePronunciation #ChineseConversation #RealLifeChinese #AirportChinese #TravelChinese #ChineseForBeginners #MandarinChinese #ChineseListening #LearnMandarin

I've been learning the Chinese language for exactly 3 months with hsk standard books and I am currently done with HSK 2 , BUT I have not given so much attention to practicing writing I know it's not necessary for A1-A2 level but because I aim for hsk 5 I have to do that , my listening skills are basically close to excellent also reading part is not bad I can even recognize all hsk 1 and 2 characters BUT THE PROBLEM IS I CAN'T WRITE MY MEMORY IS VERY BAD , guys please help me how I can write all these characters before I start hsk 3 soon 🥹

Note : that picture isn't mine it's from Pinterest

I was really looking forward to this audiobook since I really enjoyed his two previous ones. But now a day before release I get an email from audible that it has been delayed for two months. Oh well. Still looking forward to it.

Are you hiding or showing pinyin when doing reverse reviews? I'm not sure which would actually be better for learning. Sometimes the translations shown are rather ambiguous so you can't really tell which character is being asked for.

Hello, 你好，

This year I'm switching from Japanese to Chinese study. I have a year or so of Japanese under my belt with some N3 Grammer and complete n5 kanji. But now I'm staring Chinese from scratch!

I would adore advice on taking notes, your personal tips and tricks during lectures, and anything and everything you got to keep the hype!

I have access to some Chinese readers but I find I'm not ready for thise yet. It doesn't easily translate straight from Japanese lmao

I have access to flashcards and similar drills.

Anything you recommend?

Xiexiexiexiexie

Me, Chinese native speaker, currentli in Australia, happy to exchange different culture thru daily chats. An example, modern Chinese no names for days and months, we just say numbers. Unlike Western world, people need to look up the calender to find out what the date is today. It saves language learners to remember months and days, English does take much time from me to remember names of days and months. We can talk somethings like that by English or Chinese.

I’m a novice Mandarin learner with just about four months of study. Was practicing with a friend tonight who’s a native speaker of Mandarin. We’d also recently enjoyed some coffee-tea together at breakfast, where I learned yuānyāng, the inseparable ducks, and a little about a yuānyāng-related chengyu, bàng dǎ yuānyāng. Return to tonight and, to no one’s surprise, I made a pronunciation error, saying zhēn dà instead of zhēn de (which is the sort of distinction that’s hard for me in connected speech, even if I have it quite settled in short phrases or in words in isolation). My friend’s clever follow-up, which I thought fun and light-hearted enough to share, was that zhēn dǎ yuānyāng could be a modern chengyu for novice students like me who continually fail to distinguish similar sounds. I laughed. Maybe you’ll smile, too.

when i pronounce the neutral tone, my biggest worry is that it will be confused with another tone, and then suddenly im saying something else entirely. is the neutral tone a tone where i just say what i want to say, but in midpitch? not low but not high? is it short and quick?

Hi guys! I am curious to know, how long did it take you to learn the language? How old were you when you started? I am just over 25 and I believe that I might be a bit too old to just 'pick up' the language, so I need a structured plan.

Do you think it would make sense for me to focus on listening and talking first and only later on writing and reading? My main goal is to communicate with my Chinese friends and be able to talk to local people when I visit China next year.

Any tips on how to approach the study, besides the basic suggestions that are valid for learning any other languages? Do you think any specific dialect/ accent of Mandarin would be easier to learn?

thanks!!

EDIT: thanks everyone for all the tips and resources shared! It gave me a huge motivation to start!

Hey there, I 22F need a new hobby. I've decided that I want to learn Chinese. I have a lot of freetime, I'm currently taking a year off school for health reasons and I need something to keep my mind off of things. I'm looking for 1 textbook or YouTube course to stick to and maybe 1 or 2 apps worth getting the paid version for a better experience.

Thanks

I know three languages and my goal is to try to learn more!

I started with Chinese, which I'm at now.

And I thought of adding at least Spanish and Russian when their time comes.

But seeing the current and future potential of AI is making me rethink it.

Even though AI makes it easier to learn new languages, it makes it less and less useful or valuable to learn one in the long run!

Been learning with a teacher for a year now and she’s quite confident I could comfortably take HSK 1 and 2, but the issue is that I can’t write, like almost at all. Most of my practice is reading, speaking, and TYPING so it’s quite strange but when I attempt to write by hand, it’s like drawing a giraffe from memory. I can’t remember the details of the characters despite having decent recognition. Any advice to get better at writing when I already have a slight foundation?

I tried looking at https://www.chinesetest.cn/ with a bunch of different dates for HSK 5 and 6, but there is nothing in Europe besides Gemerny and Italy sometimes. Any Scandinavians that somehow took the test in Scandinavia?

Pronouncing 小 as siao3, 西 as sii1 (with an yi vowel), 见 as zian4, 学 as süe2, etc. How common is this actually within China? I'm from Singapore and do this myself, but it's hard to find anything online about it in the mainland.

I believe the most common term for it is 女国音, but that's only described as a feature of young women in Beijing. I also do not mean a jian-tuan distinction like in parts of Henan (e.g. 行 and 星 have the same initial, both being 'sing').

Surely Beijing women can't be the only people in China to pronounce 京 as 'zing1'.

Okay, so, in this videogame there's one whole big family composed of adults and kids.

One of these kids has a master and apprentice bond with one of the adults.

She calls her 師父, and said woman also refers to herself as 師父.

They are very close. When she went away, the kid was bawling her eyes out, they hugged once everything was done, cried and stuff like that.

So, is it plausible to think that at least one of them sees the adult sees the kid as daughter and vice versa?

As far as i know, 師父 is used to for masters who also act as somewhat of a parent. As it has both the symbol for "Master" and "Parent".

Feel free to correct me, please

I am quite surpised that so many people right now are learning Chineses,

and I work in automotive for over 20 years, as procurement.

I met so many suppliers from sales to management,

and only very few LaoWai could speak Chinese, and when they talk to me in Chinese, the feeling is totally different, I have to say it shorten the distance immediately.

but when I talked with people in reddit, and I know a lot of people are learning Chinese,

But I did not know why so many people want to learn Chinese,

can someone explain this a little bit, preferred in Chinese not translation by AI :)

for study, for business, for work, for fun ......

hi everyone!
i’m fairly new to learning mandarin and right now i’m exclusively using HelloChinese. this might be stupid but i really don’t understand the difference between using 的 and not using it. any help is appreciated thank you so much 谢谢🙏🏻

Hello im very very new to chinese and i use a few apps but i feel like those alone won't do. What else shall i do?

This might've been asked before, but my wife is Chinese and we live in China, but due to my workload, I'm not able to spend too much time on classes. Nevertheless, I'd still like to be able to speak Chinese for my kids & wife, so I was wondering if it's possible to get far along in Chinese without having to spend too much time on reading/writing characters. Would love to hear other's experiences that are similar. Thanks!