Blogs can be a great source for tips & tricks, ideas and inspiration, even free resources like reading materials, cheat sheets, video’s and podcasts. Blogs come an go though and some of them have already turned intoonline fossils. So when I made this top 10, I looked for four things:
This is a great blog by John Pasden, an expert and Mandarin nerd “who’s been around” for a long time. He has published a great series of graded readers for Mandarin learners. Check out his list of resources and inspiring podcasts. It’s a great starting point by someone who knows every obstacle on the way, but maybe a little too nerdy and old-school for some.
Hacking Chinese is a blog by Mandarin expert Olle Linge from Sweden who has studied for four years in Taiwan and teaches Chinese and English. Having a solid background in linguistics, he answers almost all questions related to successfully learning Mandarin Chinese. His main advise for language learners: “If you don’t take responsibility and think for yourself, it will take ages to reach a decent level, but if you become aware of how to learn and study efficiently, fluency is within reach.” Olle also organizes the “monthly extensive reading challenge“. The main goal here is not “intensive reading” but reading as much Chinese as you can below or at your current level.
FluentU is more like a corporate blog which has a team of (freelance) writers blogging for them. They don’t always share the most practical advice, they do post a lot of relevant tips and ideas though. If you’re wondering what apps you might want to use and which Chinese movies to watch, this is the right place.
Chinese Zero to Hero is not a blog, it’s a very well built website for Chinese learners. Lots of useful resources for listening, reading and grammar and they keep improving and expanding the website. I’ve grown very fond of the transcribed YouTube videos and their music database. You can even adjust the website’s settings to your personal taste (show / hide Pinyin, simplified / traditional characters etc.). Great work.
This is another corporate blog and similar to FluentU you’ll find a broad variety of topics here, not everything directly related to learning Mandarin, but interesting and engaging articles nonetheless. If you’re a fan of the Chineasy approach to character learning, you’ve come to the right place. What the blog lacks, is a categorization of content by topic, level, date etc.
This website as well is a lot broader than just focusing on mastering Mandarin. I included it because of its practical tips for foreigners interested in traveling or even living in China.
This blog by native Chinese speaker Grace (currently living in Toronto, Canada) hasn’t been updated for several years and has some technical issues, but its content and resources are just to great to ignore. If you are looking for free reading material on your level, you might get lucky here. Or look for tips, for example on how to express disagreement in Chinese.
Chinese Hacks is a widely-varied blog where you find all kinds of practical advise, ideas and inspiration. I particularly enjoy the Chinese idioms covered on his site. Pity it’s not being updated anymore.
Chinese Breeze is run by three authors who studied Mandarin in China and offer their advise to other learners. This main overview by Kevin Peters, who taught English in Xinjiang for four years, is especially useful for starting learners.
Chineseffect.com also deserves mentioning. This is a fun website for learning and practicing vocabulary created by FM_Yunfei. The team behind it put a lot of effort not only in the content and exercises but also in the webdesign. Now the website requires some technical updates though…
After the Mexican flue, SARS and MERS it was about time the world got hit by another pandemic. Allegedly, this time it all started ona Wuhan wet market where the locals buy their portion of snake and armadillomeat. In this post, I share some virus-related key vocabulary and firsthand footage from Corona-survivors.
Shortage of face masks
To start on an optimistic note: Did you know that if you’re still alive today, you’re a virus-survivor too? (One of 7.7 billion people)! If you were planning to go to China, you might want to postpone your next trip though and wear one of those trendy face masks if you use public transport, just in case. That is if you can still lay your (disinfected) hands on one. For this Chinese YouTuber it all seems too late.
With English and Chinese subtitles.
China is red
It’s a very, very serious situation, so I did some homework on the virus-related key vocabulary that you read in the Chinese news. “For your daily apocalypse click here”. The virus is everywhere. It’s amazing how quickly bad news spreads and people start panicking. (Positive news about China usually doesn’t make it to Germany, it’s mostly bad, though more and more people (mistakenly) sympathize with “the Chinese way” of governing, although they don’t live there themselves). Even here in Europe many ten thousands miles away from the disaster zone the news is dominated by it. Online news papers provide hourly updates as if the world will perish. It’s almost like a drug.
China is redagain! This is a map of how the virus is spreading. You can see in which countries cases have been confirmed.
Business opportunities
But where disaster strikes, you’ll also find business opportunities! Do you think 25 bucks is a good price to protect yourself against virus infection? The Asian girl on the picture sure does. Did they pick an Asian girl for a reason or is it just me? From what I hear masks in Germany and many other countries are sold out at the moment.
口罩都卖完了!
武汉加油！
Meanwhile people in Wuhan can’t go nowhere, so during the long cold nights they started shouting at each other to uplift their spirits. A rather unusual spectacle, isn’t it? It’s hard to imagine a complete lock-down on such a gigantic city.
武汉加油！
新冠病毒
Xīnguān bìngdú
New corona virus
感染新冠病毒的人
gǎnrǎn xīnguān bìngdú de rén
People infected with the new corona virus
Who can you trust?
In this video “teacher Mike” discusses the latest rumors about the virus. Which media can you trust, the western or Chinese news? Where does Mike get his info from? After all he lives there, so he needs to know. Unfortunately, no subtitles.
Virus vocabulary
感染
gǎnrǎn
to infect
感染新冠病毒的人
gǎnrǎn xīnguān bìngdú dí rén
people infected with the new corona virus
受到病毒感染
shòudào bìngdú gǎnrǎn
get infected with the virus
无症状感染者
wú zhèngzhuàng gǎnrǎn zhě
people that are infected but do not display any symptoms
传染他人
chuánrǎn tārén
contaminate others
有传染力
yǒu chuánrǎn lì
to be contagious or to have “contaminating power”
The ultimate learning video
I finally found a video that walks you through all the Corona-related vocabulary that you need to understand Chinese news reports about the virus. Chinese and English subtitles. Very clear pronunciation.
确诊
quèzhěn
confirmed diagnosis
确诊病例
quèzhěn bìnglì
confirmed cases
死亡人数
sǐwáng rénshù
number of dead people
2%死亡率
2% sǐwáng lǜ
death rate of 2 %
What’s this Corona virus anyway?
For real in-depth information about the virus you need to listen to Li Yongle Laoshi, cause he can explain almost everything. He’s one of the first people I see explaining something about the virus itself: how it behaves and how it multiplies and so on. With Chinese subtitles.
封城
fēng chéng
sealed city
宣布”封城”
xuānbù”fēng chéng”
to announce that the city is sealed
武汉
wǔhàn
Wuhan
症状
zhèngzhuàng
symptoms
无症状携带病毒者
wú zhèngzhuàng xiédài bìngdú zh
infected people without symptoms
治疗
zhìliáo
medical treatment
接受治疗
jiēshòu zhìliáo
receive medical treatment
扩散
kuòsàn
to spread
病毒扩散
bìngdú kuòsàn
the spreading of the virus
Go shopping, decrease panic
In this video German vlogger Thomas阿福 shows us the “shopping situation” in Shanghai. Are prices really skyrocketing as rumor has it? You can add to the panic as I’ve written above but you can also try to decrease panic and hysteria like Thomas does here. Great job!
An expert opinion…
I’ll finish here with a message of hope from German professor and virus expert Rolf Hilgenfeld, interviewed by German Youtuber Thomas阿福. Hilgenfeld states that the Corona virus won’t be able to multiply forever. Scientists are testing vaccinations right now. Once enough people have been in contact with the virus and produced antigens, the growth will decrease and the pandemic will stop. A matter of 6 to 12 months, he estimates. Let’s hope the situation gets better soon.
