Chinese dictionary apps: Pleco vs Hanping Lite

Posted on 19 February 2020 by Hongshu in Starting out and tagged language tools, learn chinese, Mandarin.

You’re learning Chinese and looking for a Chinese dictionary app to install on your phone, but don’t want to spend any money. At least not before you know what you can get for free. That’s why for this comparison I only take free features of the two most downloaded dictionary apps into account: Pleco and Hanping Lite.

Pleco vs Hanping Lite: which app is better?

I won’t lie to you: I’m biased towards Pleco as I’ve been using that app as a student until this very day and it has never let me down. But I still want to give Hanping Lite a fair chance. The app keeps getting loads of positive reviews (as does Pleco) in the Google app store and seems to match the needs of its users.

Hanping Lite presents itself as the free and limited version of Hanping Pro. The latter can be purchased for little money (3.39 €, 15.02.2019) and has some features the lite version doesn’t have like AnkiDroid Flashcards support and the stroke order of 839 characters (instead of 463 characters in the lite version). Beware though that you don’t get the full functionality of the app once you buy the “pro version”. Many “pro features” still have to be purchased separately.

Pleco, on the other hand, is Pleco. There is no pro version to which you can upgrade. If you want additional functions, you can buy the premium features or add-ons, either one by one or in bundle packages.

Google app store – review score

The score of Pleco and Hanping Lite in the Google App Store is amazingly similar, although the amount of reviews differs significantly. Pleco (founded in 2000) has been installed over one million times on Android, Hanping Lite over half a million. Hanping actually isn’t the new kid on the block I thought it was. It dates back to 2009 and – needless to say – has been further developed improved ever since (as has Pleco).

Hanping Lite – the good and the bad

To keep this short, I’ll focus on those features which positively surprised me and then discuss the more disappointing things. Here I won’t go into the essentials that you expect to get from any dictionary app so much – like comfortable word search and accurate and up-to-date translations.

Positives

Three Hanping features I want to highlight here:

Hanping Lite: soundboard with all Pinyin syllables

The Pinyin soundboard: It covers all Pinyin syllables and helps you practice the four tones, however only isolated syllables, not in combination. Nonetheless, this is a great help for anyone trying to master Chinese tones and pronunciation. Pleco doesn’t have this feature.

The radical list: When you want to see how characters are interconnected by the same radical, the radical list is your best friend. Hanping’s radical list is superior to Pleco’s for one simple reason. It provides the meaning of every radical where as Pleco’s search list just presents the radicals. Most dictionary users aren’t familiar with ALL radicals and it’s very easy to forget them. That’s why reading the definition beneath every radical is both convenient and insightful. This is a very useful feature for anyone trying to tackle Hanzi. Apart from that both (radical) search systems are organized in the same manner (by number of strokes).
Tags: This is another feature that Pleco lacks. You can tag characters, allowing you to organize your vocabulary into groups. HSK categories for example – or less obvious – your own personal tags like “tech”, “movies” or “October”, “November” or whatever suits your purpose.

Negatives

Here’s what I found less satisfying and this bullet list is slightly longer:

Hanping Lite: Upgrade to Pro — **Hanping Lite: “Upgrade to Pro”**

Lacking example sentences: Any serious dictionary not just delivers the translation you’re looking for, it also gives you some example sentences and context of use. In this regard, Hanping Lite is no match for Pleco. Even though the app does contain 5000 example sentences for basic vocabulary, with Pleco you get a great deal more, example sentences for less common vocabulary included.
English translations of example sentences are a “PRO feature”: Hanping Lite deserves a minus point on the sympathy score for disabling the English google translation for Lite users. Hanzi, Pinyin: yes, but no English which is a pain in the neck for most people. The only rationale behind this – I guess – is to make you buy the “pro version” which does include the English translation…
Flashcards are a “PRO feature”: For the majority of learners a Chinese dictionary app without some kind of option to create flashcards to practice vocabulary is incomplete. The Hanping developers play into this by cutting out the flashcard feature completely, hoping you will go for the “pro version” instead. Another minus point.

Clipboard reader is not practical to use: When you’re working your way through a text with several words that need checking, the clipboard reader is your best option. Copy & paste the paragraph and read it directly “inside” the dictionary, so you don’t have to switch between screens and look up each word one by one. The Hanping Lite clipboard reader fails to simplify this process, because you’re still forced to open new tabs and then jump between them to look up words. The Pleco clipboard reader solves this problem with a pop-up screen that reveals the word’s meaning to you once you tap on the character(s). Simple, yet effective. You can read entire news articles with it if you want.
Affiliate marketing: Another minus point for promoting a VPN service and an online Chinese tutoring platform which doesn’t add any value to the user experience.

If I add up the minus points, I hardly can avoid the conclusion that Hanping Lite is so downgraded for no other reason than “to lure” people into buying the pro version. Maybe it’s worth to spend a few bucks on the upgrade – that’s for another review to discuss – but this downgrading unfortunately does reduce my sympathy for the Hanping project: If the “lite version” doesn’t convince me, why should I want to invest in the “pro version”?

Pleco – the good and the bad

What about the Pleco Chinese dictionary and its free functions? How big is the difference between Pleco and Hanping Lite?

Positives

These Pleco features stand out:

Most comprehensive pool of dictionaries: With Pleco you just get more. The dictionary itself is the most essential part of the app, right? It’s Pleco’s key function. According to the developer the two main integrated dictionaries cover 130,000 Chinese words and include 20,000 example sentences with Pinyin. Another 8 dictionaries are optional downloads, free of charge. Decide for yourself.
Most detailed character information: Expanding on my first point, I found that Pleco provides the richest information about any given character. From example sentences to anto- and synonyms, “words containing” the given character, “words ending” with the given character, breaking the character into its parts etc. This is much more than even a regular Chinese-Chinese dictionary can offer.
Search history is more accurate: This is another attractive feature. Say you’re watching the Chinese news and looking up several new words. This Pleco session will be stored in your search history with the exact time and date. Extremely useful, when you’re reconstructing what you’ve learnt in Chinese class, are revising what you’ve learnt the previous day or week or just want to make notes. Every word you’ve looked up will still be there. Hanping Lite displays previous search entries, but without the time and date.
The interface is more user-friendly: I’m a bit cautious bringing forth this argument, since I’m no app developer or UX designer. Besides, I’ve been a longtime user and may simply prefer Pleco’s interface by force of habit. What I’m pointing at though is the convenience of use. Pleco’s search screen with its tabs is designed to have everything within reach, avoiding endlessly scrolling down.

Negatives

I really gave my best to come up with some negative aspects about Pleco’s free features as well, however – even after some research – I fail to do so. I can’t find any free feature that from my point of view as a user needs improvement. Even without paid upgrades like readers and such Pleco has to offer a lot.

Pleco beats Hanping Lite

To sum it all up: Pleco is my number one.

What strikes me is that both apps follow (almost) the same business model: a free version with paid add-ons. Yet with Pleco you’re not forced to purchase the upgraded version first to get the “real deal”, you simply pay for those extra features you want or you leave it. Pleco adopted this model from an early stage and it has served them well.

Where as with Hanping Lite you get an app that is significantly downgraded, pushing you into buying the pro version that’s only slightly better. Once you’ve upgraded, you’ll discover you still didn’t get the “real deal”. But as I mentioned previously: If the “lite version” didn’t convince me, why should I want to invest in the “pro version”?

You might come to different conclusions comparing Pleco and Hanping Pro while spending – let’s say – 40 bucks on each. If you’re serious about learning Chinese investing some money into certain apps is a very reasonable thing to do. But that’s a different comparison that has to wait for another review.

Which one do you prefer, Pleco or Hanping? Which features do you like the most? Which add-ons do you find the most useful? Please feel free to comment! : )

Ideology in Chinese textbooks

Posted on 10 February 2020 by Hongshu in Study and tagged China, Chinese culture, Chinese reading, learning Chinese, Mandarin.

Chinese learning materials have improved a lot over the last 50 years, however more often than not the Chinese learner gets that feeling of being stuck in an artificial world while the real thing – authentic communication – is being kept away from him. But what happens when this artificial world is an ideological world?

Every learner of Mandarin is familiar with it: dialogues that are written just to present grammar patterns and a bunch of key vocabulary; fictional characters that talk like robots, exchanging bits of information nobody cares about. Some new stuff is introduced, then everything gets explained with multiple examples, exceptions and little footnotes. The learner is supposed to do a number of exercises and after all that he should be able to reproduce most of that on his own and then move on to the next chapter. Furthermore, he’s expected to progress at an ever steady pace, at the end of the book reaching the language level it says on the cover.

Now we all want to master Mandarin and speak with native-like fluency. What we don’t want is to linger in this artificial realm where non-existing people have endless minimalist conversations like “ni shi Jianadaren ma? wo bu shi Jianadaren, wo shi Meiguoren.” and so on. We don’t want to be children in our target language, we want to be treated like adults from the start. Like in the movie The Karate Kid the black belt is our goal, but we’d like to skip the part with the hard work and suffering.

Ideology and politics

But there is something far worse. Learning materials thankfully have evolved away from that, though not completely. And you could even argue that it’s impossible for any foreign language textbooks to be completely “clean” of it. Older learners who started learning Chinese in Mainland China way back still remember in particular. It’s the presence of ideology and politics in textbooks.

Although this probably has to do less with didactic aspects than it has to do with the simple fact that back in the time of Mao everything was about ideology and politics. Whoever wanted to understand China had to read Mao and the founding stories of that era. Everything referred to that particular set of beliefs and principles of Mao’s political system and the party. You just couldn’t escape it.

In fact, all that was very relevant. Let’s not forget the communists had kicked all foreigners out of the country. Those few foreigners who did come from abroad to visit the People’s Republic of China had good reasons to know their deal about Maoist China and it’s main narrative. After all they had to know how to behave diplomatically in the New China and not to hurt anybody’s feelings.

The Chinese Reader (1972, Beijing)

The Chinese Reader series, 1972, Beijing

This Chinese reader published in Beijing in 1972 is a perfect example of how politics infiltrated the study of Mandarin on every level. This series of readers was developed for intermediate learners. And in some ways I’m surprised by its quality. The chapters are well arranged, the characters nice and clear to read. Black and white drawings visualize what you’re reading. There’s even one color picture of the Great Wall. You’d expect that 50 years later the books would be falling apart, but clearly they refuse to do so.

Sacrifices for a socialist future

The first book starts out with the founding of the PRC, looks back on the Second Sino-Japanese war and shares many “educational” stories about the Mao-era, like the student girl from Shanghai who is sent to the countryside to learn from the poor peasants. It also contains a speech from the Chairman where he urges his countrymen to make sacrifices for the great cause, even to die if need be. It’s rather heavy stuff that would repel any present-day learner who’ll probably ask what all this propaganda is doing there in the first place. Let’s say it’s a different experience…

Dong Cunrui – a true warrior

But it doesn’t stop there. We also meet the great war hero Dong Cunrui in the first book. It’s a short meeting, since he decides to blow himself up with dynamite to destroy a Japanese bunker, shouting “for a new China!”. There is no way to effectively place the explosives so he chooses to support the bomb with his hand, thus loosing his life. From what I hear the story of Dong Cunrui is still being told in Chinese schools today. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

A revolutionary party is, in its essence, the party of its leader that carries out his ideology and cause, and the main thing in its building is to ensure the unitary character and inheritance of his ideology and leadership.
Kim Jong-Un

Liu Hulan – “A great life, a glorious death”

Where you mention Dong Cunrui, we should also not forget the Liu Hulan. She was a local communist youth leader in a village in Shanxi Province. One winter day in 1947, the Kuomintang surrounded the village and forced the whole village to gather in a temple. The nationalists started arresting several communists, including Liu Hulan. I’ll quote a fragment of the textbook here:

“敌人把刘胡兰带到了一座庙里，匪军连长恶狠狠地问 : “你叫刘胡兰？”

“刘胡兰回答我就是刘胡兰！”

“你跟八路军哪些人走联系？”

“和谁也没联系！”

“没联系？有人已经供出你是共产党员了！”

The army officer urges her to point out her fellow communists to them, but she refuses, saying not even for a mountain of gold would she betray them. Then she states in front of them all that she doesn’t fear death. That being said the nationalists kill her. Chairman Mao, so we continue to read, remembered her with the words: “A great life, a glorious death”. She died at the age of 14.

The English Wikipedia tells the same story in more detail. The article is surprisingly subjective and quotes only a few sources. This is how the death of the young girl is described: “During the interrogation, the Kuomintang tried every possible method to induce Liu Hulan to betray her allies. Liu Hulan refused to obey and died heroically.” It seems the story of Liu Hulan still lives on today, not least on Wikipedia.

Revolutionary vocabulary

The vocabulary which we learn in this book is probably not like anything you’ve seen before, unless you’ve been – let’s say – “politically trained” the Comintern way. It’s been said that after you read Marx, Engels and thinkers like Gramsci, Adorno, Marcuse and so on you’ll never be quite the same.

But this is something different. This book is supposed to teach you a foreign language. It comes however, with a totalitarian world view that separates friend from foe and good from evil. It tells you everything you need to know to function in this new society that Mao is building, even though the Chinese reader obviously is aimed at foreigners. Let’s take a look at some randomly selected vocabulary from the book:

反动派 – reactionary faction (in other words everyone against communism)
帝国主义 – imperialism (those nations who brought humiliation upon China by claiming parts of it)
机枪 – machine gun (power comes from the barrel of a gun, right?)
机械化 – mechanize (remember the Great Leap Forward?)
进攻 – to attack
开国 – the founding of a country
叛徒 – traitor
破坏 – to destroy
强迫 – to force
手榴弹 – hand grenade
牺牲 – to sacrifice (one’s life) (this seems to be the main message in most of the chapters)

Ideology-free learning?

Mao's red bible being sold on a street market in Kaifeng — *Mao’s red bible being sold on a street market in Kaifeng near the Henan University*

I know the examples I brought here are rather extreme, but then again, Marx, Lenin and Mao still play a major part in the education of Chinese children today. However nowadays Mao’s red book is sold on the streets for little money and people don’t seem to care so much. Nobody will blame you if you don’t know your Mao-bible by heart or – for that matter – decide to sell it. Western tourists pay good money for it. But does that mean the end of ideology in Chinese textbooks for non-native learners? Have we really moved on? It actually made me think of the deeper question whether it’s possible to learn a foreign language WITHOUT absorbing (some of) its values…

What are your thoughts on this topic? Would you say your Chinese books are ideology-free? Please feel free to comment below.

大张伟 – 葫芦娃 (2018)

Posted on 6 February 2020 by Hongshu in Music and tagged Chinese, Chinese culture, Chinese songs, learning Chinese, Music.

Wowkie Zhang – Calabash brothers (2018)

葫芦娃葫芦娃
一根藤上七个瓜
风吹雨打都不怕
啦啦啦啦
葫芦娃葫芦娃
一根藤上七个瓜
风吹雨打都不怕
啦啦啦啦
叮当当咚咚当当葫芦娃
叮当当咚咚当当本领大
葫芦娃葫芦娃本领大

妖精放了我爷爷!

The original theme song from the cartoon

趙傳 – 我是一只小小鸟 (1990)

Posted on 4 February 2020 by Hongshu in Music and tagged China, Chinese, Chinese culture, Chinese songs, learning Chinese, Music.

I’m a little bird (1990)

有时候我觉得自己像一只小小鸟
想要飞却怎么样也飞不高
也许有一天我栖上了枝头
却成为猎人的目标
我飞上了青天才发现自己
从此无依无靠

每次到了夜深人静的时候我总是睡不着
我怀疑是不是只有我的明天没有变得更好
未来会怎样
究竟有谁会知道
幸福是否只是一种传说
我永远都找不到

我是一只小小小小鸟
想要飞呀飞却飞也飞不高
我寻寻觅觅寻寻觅觅一个温暖的怀抱
这样的要求算不算太高
我是一只小小小小鸟
想要飞呀飞却飞也飞不高
我寻寻觅觅寻寻觅觅一个温暖的怀抱
这样的要求算不算太高

所有知道我的名字的人呐
你们好不好
世界时如此的小
我们注定无处可逃
当我尝尽人情冷暖
当你决定为了你的理想燃烧
生活的压力与生命的尊严
哪一个重要

我是一只小小小小鸟
想要飞呀飞却飞也飞不高
我寻寻觅觅寻寻觅觅一个温暖的怀抱
这样的要求算不算太高
这样的要求算不算太高

Learning Chinese? 10 BLOGS you should know about

Posted on 3 February 2020 by Hongshu in Resources and tagged China blogs, Chinese, Chinese culture, Ideas, language learning, learning Chinese, Mandarin, zuihao.

Blogs are a great source for ideas, tips and inspiration. It’s a pity that some of them don’t get the audience they deserve. This is my personal top ten of blogs on the topic of learning Mandarin Chinese.

Blogs come an go and some of them have already turned into online fossils. So when I made this top 10, I looked for four things: