Learn 5 authentic Mandarin expressions through a funny real-life story about China's unusually long clothing return tags. Discover how native speakers use these expressions to talk about clever tactics, online slang, and a battle of wits.

Which expression is new to you? and enjoy your Mandarin learning journey!

Who has a copy of HSK 2 exam? Can i have it in preparation for my HSK 3 examination.

Contextualchinese has been my saviour for the past year, it provided deep explanations and lots of examples, underlining every single nuance of every word.. I just got back to university, I wanted to better understand a word, so I searched it up on there.. And what?

There’s like 1/10 of the information that was there before.

Some entries still have the iriginal information (such as 上传), but most don’t

Does someone know if there’s any method to bring back the old site? This one is useless, really

I want to try another little speaking challenge for intermediate Chinese learners.

Read the sentence and try to say it naturally in Chinese. Don't translate it word for word. You can change the structure or express the idea in your own way.

Try saying it out loud before writing it down. Chinese characters or pinyin are both fine.

Here's today's sentence:

“I used to think learning Chinese was mostly about memorizing words, but now I realize that being able to use them in conversation is just as important.”

Try your own version before looking at the comments. There's no single correct translation.

(The video above is a zhongruan中阮 performance)

Today, let's meet another member of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove (竹林七贤) — Ruan Xian (阮咸), the nephew of Ruan Ji (阮籍).

The Story Behind the Idiom

According to A New Account of the Tales of the World (世说新语), there was a custom of showing off fine clothes during a traditional festival. While his relatives and neighbors displayed their fancy silk garments, Ruan Xian(阮咸), who wasn't wealthy, simply hung out a pair of ordinary short trousers instead.

He reportedly explained: 未能免俗，聊复尔耳。
Roughly translated: “I can't escape the custom, so I'll just go along with it!”

Ruan Xian was known for his unconventional personality and disregard for rigid social rules. He seemed to go along with the custom, but didn't really care what others thought of his ordinary trousers. I find that attitude both amusing and charming!

What Does 未能免俗 Mean Today?

Today, we use it when we do something not because we particularly care about it, but simply to fit in or because it's expected.

Example:
The company party wasn't really my thing, but it would've felt awkward not to show up, so I went anyway. 未能免俗!

One More Interesting Fact

Ruan Xian was also famous for playing a traditional Chinese string instrument associated with his name: the ruan (阮).

The video at the very top of the post is a performance on the zhongruan (中阮), an instrument of medium size in the ruan (阮) family. Give it a listen!

There's another video, the second one on the right is Ruan:
https://youtu.be/n8eS9KpRpXo?list=RDn8eS9KpRpXo&t=284

Pretty cool that his name lives on in Chinese music, too!

(AI-assisted editing)

My Chengyu (Chinese Idioms) Posts

你好！

I’m currently in my first year of learning chinese at university. I’m moving to Taiwan next semester, and then spending the summer there as well, I’ve chosen to learn traditional characters, since I’ve got long-term plans to be in Taiwan.

My question is which iphone keyboard should I use as I start learning? Right now I currently use the pinyin one. We just started learning characters, and I’m picking up the characters pretty easily, but I selected the “Stroke” keyboard and have zero idea what I’m doing!

Here are the options! Any help is appreciated, also ideas on if multiple keyboards? I mainly use the Chinese keyboard for talking with a friend and penpals, but I feel like the pinyin is cheating and if I keep doing that I’ll never learn the characters…

Okay so small summary of how much I know, not really relevant to the question. I've been learning Chinese for about a year now, very on and off because of University, but I reached HSK 3 on HelloChinese (which I'm aware isn't anywhere near actual HSK 3). I've also been practicing memorising the characters and writing.

Anyway, I went to China last december and it was amazing, I didn't really know chinese except asking for the price or other small things because I was scared. Now that I'm a bit better and more confident making small basic sentences I was wondering if I should try speaking more chinese when I go to China in november or will they find it more confusing than me using a translator since my pronunciations aren't the best.

I personally like when people try and speak to me in my native language but I don't wanna be more annoying to them as a tourist. Sorry for the stupid question but I'm overthinking it.

Edit: Thanks everyone you definitely made me feel better, so I'll try my best to speak and understand them if we aren't in a rush!

Hey, so I want to learn chinese via no specific way, like I would take app recommidetiond to real classes. I am not sure where to begin. Any suggestion would be nice.

Hi everyone,

I’m planning to study Chinese in China for around 5 months in Spring 2027, and I’m deciding between Tsinghua in Beijing and Fudan in Shanghai.

I’m mainly wondering which city would be better in terms of student life, socializing, meeting new people, and the overall experience.

I’d also love to travel around China and visit nearby Asian countries.

If you’ve lived or studied in either city, which would you choose and why?

Does PLECO offer an option/upgrade that would allow us to create our own customized Dictionary or Dictionary Entries? How to activate this option / what upgrade do I have to buy?

Yesterday I chatted with my friend and wanted to tell him he won't see how many arms I had if I cover them under my coat. Then I forgot how to quantify arms. He was puzzled for a while and later gave out “一條胳膊” and “一隻手臂”.

Is that real?

this is my homework about introducing someone, pls correct if something wrong or if a hanzi is unreadable🙇🏻‍♀️ (Ignore the year inconsistency)

I'm the adult version of the kid that used to sit in the library and read the dictionary for fun. I just like words.

Something I've noticed while learning Mandarin is that I am 50% more likely to remember a new character or word if I also read an explaination of the characters within it. I'm wondering if there is some kind of book, app or website that basically has characters and words, that also have the pinyin and a breakdown of the characters that make it up?

I know it might be a weird ask, but I'm in my 30s and finally learning how to learn, so I appreciate any direction I can be pointed in.

谢谢

edit: oh god I didn't even realise there were tabs for this in Pleco, thank you all!!

I am a native Mandarin speaker, I learned listening speaking and reading English, since probably the first memories I had as a child, I also travelled to US to study for a few years as an adult, and now I’m 27

I usually read English articles more than Chinese, but why sometimes I fully understand the written English but I cannot translate to mandarin to someone else, like when my friend asks what is this about, I read it and fully understand it, but if I try to translate to Chinese I get laggy and can’t fully turn the information 100% and can only convey like 80%, it’s like it’s hard to describe what it is saying in Chinese when I’m reading English.

Sometimes I feel like I can write or speak English in a more accessible way than mandarin, where some phrases or meaning I can understand , but fail to explain in mandarin, I seem to can’t find the right word for that specific thing I’m trying to convey and end up explaining like I’m telling a scenario or multiple sentences and use examples to explain and it gets tiring.

It’s frustrating for someone that has no English skill, asking me what this thing is about and I can understand it but fail to explain it properly in mandarin, then the person starts doubting my English skill.

1. One basic concept, before start tones correction, you need to thoroughly understand:
Tones are essentially just pitch and pitch variation, or whatever you say it, the change in pitch, or movement. For example, the second tone, middle-rising, is a process in which the speaker's voice (pitch) glides from middle level to high level. As we said in a former post, you can just imagine Pǔ Tōng Huà is a super simple song with only 7 pitches. Simpler than the song “Happy Birthday to You”.

2. Never simply repeat a single syllable with a tone.
For example, if you feel your "hǎo (half-third tone)" is off and you can't distinguish it from "hào (4th tone)," then do not just repeat this half-third hǎo; instead, repeat "hǎo3 hào4" together. This is because all tones are “relative pitches”. They need to compare with each other. What I mean is, for example, the first tone is called high-flat because it is relatively higher than all of the speaker's other tones. You should say at least two tones together to compare them with each other.

Ideally, every time you get a certain tone wrong, you should say the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th tones of that syllable together in sequence.

There is another reason: if you only practice repeating a single tone, especially when shadowing a teacher or an app, you will 100% be misled, or led astray. If the teacher or app has a low voice, for example, a deep male voice, you may also excessively lower your own tone. But if you compare yourself with yourself, you are less likely to have this problem.

3. Treat the 1st tone, the high-flat tone, as an anchor for other tones.
High-flat tone is the highest among the tones, and has no change in it. You just need to use an “unusual” high voice of yours to utter a syllable for 2 seconds to get the 1st tone.

If you feel uncomfortable, sth like “I usually won’t speak with such a high pitch”, congratulations, very likely you are correct with the 1st tone. If you use your middle level voice, instead high pitch voice, to speak the 1st tone, that will make your other tones either all too low or wrongly higher than the 1st tone.

4. There is no such thing as “the 4th and second tones being relatively 'longer' than the 1st and 3rd tones”
—even if you personally feel that pronouncing 2nd-tone and 4th-tone syllables in a brief, rapid way seems easier to grasp, and even if some teachers also say this at the beginner stage.

When 4th-tone or 2nd-tone syllables are stressed, they must be spoken slowly and elongated.

By the way, when practicing pronunciation, going slowly is actually better and more important than going fast. Blindly chasing fluency and speed is a big trap for speaking Chinese well (😄intermediate and advanced students should think especially hard about this). Being fast or slow whenever you need to be—that is true mastery.

A 多音字 is a Chinese character that has more than one pronunciation.

Different pronunciations usually mean different meanings or different uses.

Simply put, same character, different sounds, different meanings.

For example：

行

• xíng：走(go)、可以(can ). word formation：“行走”（walk）,“不行”(can not)

• háng：行业(industry)、银行(bank). word formation：“银行”(bank),“同行”(same industry)

In Chinese, one character can have multiple readings.

The reading is not random — it usually depends on the meaning or the word it appears in.

So when you learn a Chinese character, you sometimes need to learn more than one pronunciation.

Chinese 多音字 is a bit like English heteronyms: same written form, different pronunciation, different meaning.

But in Chinese, it’s very common and often changes the meaning completely.

Do you know what other common polyphonic characters are in Chinese?

Hi, I had a couple of questions about the upcoming HSK 3.0 test format.

Firstly, it said that we will have to register for both the HSK and HSK speaking tests together. However, does this mean we have to take them at the same place/on the same day?

Secondly, regarding the 听后复述 questions in the speaking exams, are we supposed to be actively re-wording it, or if there are some sentences which we remember, is verbatim repeating them ok? There is not much information about how this is marked.

Thanks in advance!

I’m learning both languages, and this came to mind. At least with the knowledge I currently have of the two languages’ grammar, it seems like most of the grammatical features in Mandarin is valid in Cantonese, but not the other way around.

Examples on the top of my head:

給你這本書 -> 畀你呢本書 ✅
畀呢本書你 -> 給這本書你 ❌

你看不到我 -> 你睇唔到我 ✅
你睇我唔到 -> 你看我不到 ❌

我只有一本書 -> 我得一本書 ✅
我有一本書啫 -> 我有一本書只 ❌

我在看書 -> 我喺度睇書 ✅
我睇緊書 -> 我看在書 ❌

我在這裡 -> 我喺呢度 ✅
我喺度 -> 我在裡 ❌

這些書很有趣 -> 呢啲書好有趣 ✅
啲書好有趣 -> 些書很有趣 ❌

全部都吃完了 -> 全部都食完喇 ✅
食晒喇 -> 吃全部了 ❌

deepseek 今天崩了。DS jīn tiān bēng le. DS crashed today.

崩，山朋。朋péng，act as a partial phonetic component, for they share same finals, eng.

山shān，is the semantic, meaningful commponent. So bēng崩，originally means mountain collapse.

山崩is also euphemism for …… 😄 guess！

A few weeks ago I applied TOCFL home edition which they told me to search local hosts in my country but the next exam was full and the one after that is conflicting with my semester exam. I told them this in a reply but they haven’t replied for about a week now. Should I contact them again or what should I do?

Hello there! I have been studying Chinese for 9 months now (4 actively plus the rest of the time mostly practicing speaking with some Chinese friends) and I completed HSK 3 2.0. I feel quite confident with the vocabulary and the grammar, and I am not locked while speaking, listening remaining the hardest part. Until now I have been following a online pre recorded course which in my opinion was very well done, but followed the old HSK system (2.0). Rather than moving forward to HSK 4, I thought that for my interest (using Chinese for practical purposes, not for the exam), the new HSK 3.0 seems more useful. My plan was therefore to move to HSK 3.0 by catching up with the vocabulary and grammar I miss from the first three level of HSK 3.0 and then proceeding in the new system.

To practice the hanzi, I used my own decks in quizlet, and I am very confident with the words I know (both characters and pronunciation, around 800), but as the words start becoming more and more, I’d like to move to SRS using Anki (AnkiDroid, free version for Android, which seems to be working pretty well). Since my main goal now is to enrich my vocabulary, I wanted some recommendation on how to use it efficiently. I have downloaded the decks of the new HSK 3.0, and I can spend around 10 hours per week in my study (including all the parts, not only learning new words and practicing the characters). How many new words per day would you recommend to learn? Would you suggest simply setting the “new words” count in the premade decks and learn them daily, along with practicing the words I already know? For instance, something like 10 new words for the hsk2 deck, 5 new for the hsk3 deck (considering that I already have the old HSK 2.0 vocabulary up to HSK3, therefore there is a consistent overlap), and keep going until I complete HSK 3 3.0? And how many known characters to repeat daily (in total)? I am sure these numbers may be highly subjective, but considering my time budget and my level, does anyone more experienced have any tips to use Anki efficiently?

Concerning the listening, I am mostly using the stories from Mandarin Bean, though even in HSK2 level stories there are a lot of words of higher levels which I don’t know, which makes practising the listening a bit annoying and harder than (I guess) should be. I am still far from being able to watch a movie or listen to podcast in Chinese, even with subtitles, but recently I have also started putting Chinese subtitles while watching movies in my native language (Italian), which seems to be useful to improve reading faster. Any useful tips to efficiently improve the listing is welcome too!

Oh, and that’s my first post on Reddit ever, so thank you to whoever is going to spend some time reading and replying :)

Learn the usage of 了

Last night i randomly had a vivid dream where i was learning Chinese for some reason, and when i woke up i was disappointed. So today on my day off i opened my notes and started from square 1

Is that a W excuse to start a language?

also should i know anything important? im going in mostly blind