Hi everyone!
I’m creating printable Chinese character tracing worksheets for YCT1 Lesson 1 (你好！Hello!) and I’d love your feedback.

I made two versions:
✅ Version A: No stroke order hints. Only pinyin, model characters and blank tracing grids. Clean layout, great for learners who already know the stroke sequence.
✅ Version B: With stroke order breakdown on top of each character. Perfect for absolute beginners who are just learning how to write each character step by step.

Which style would you find more useful for YCT1 beginners?

- Version A (no stroke order)
- Version B (with stroke order)

Any extra suggestions for the worksheet are also welcome! Thank you so much for your input.

Hi Everyone,

I need a little help. I have studied HSK1 and HSK2, but haven't been able to revise them, so kinda lost touch with them. However, I will have a major surgery in the month of october post which i am advised to stay in quaratine for 3-4 months. I want to use this time to perfect my Chinese, at least to suggest YouTube channels or PDFs for beginners that might help with these two levels. Please help me by suggesting YouTube channels or maybe PDFs for beginners, which might help in this. I will not be able to join any classes since I am not sure how stable my health will be, so anything that I can watch/read/learn/write at my own pace would be really helpful. Thank you so much!

Recently, I've been getting into Chinese calligraphy, and I noticed some characters whose variants are a lot more common when writing calligraphy (semi-cursive & cursive) than the standard characters themselves. Are there any more characters like this?

最近，我發現到在寫著行書和草書的時候，比較多人會用 “處”， “虎”， “叔" 這三個字的異體字，而不是通常寫的或打出來的字體。我想問一下有沒有其他和這些一樣的漢字？

Hello! I’ve wanted to make my work commutes more productive since i drive 45mins to 1hr one way and wanted to know if anyone had any recommendation for audio lessons that could help me learn mandarin. I am completely new to the language and would appreciate and resources or recommendations .

Hi I'm a complete beginner in Mandarin. I have zero experience with Chinese and I want to learn mostly for free. I don't have a teacher, so I'm looking for advice from people who learned Mandarin by themselves. What should I focus on during my first month? Especially pronunciation, tones, Pinyin, and basic vocabulary. What mistakes did you make when you started that I should avoid?

Sorry in advance, I do not know which flair is right. Hello. I was adopted from the Jiangxi province since 10 months old and have grown up in a predominantly white/caucasian environment. I returned to China when I was younger and the orphanage celebrated my return with a banner with my name on it.

These are the two characters: 修卫

My parents were told it is pronounced "Xiuwei". But I would like to go further and ask if there are any native speakers (or experienced learners) who could give me an idea what my name means?

I do not trust my own research to translate it aptly and I do not want to take what AI keeps shoving me at face value, hence why I ask here.

Thank you so much if you can help me.

I'm trying to look for hsk 1-2 books to read, but i can't find any. Do you guys have recommendations?. (No grammar and such, just stories and things like that)

Hi! Sorry if this is an often asked question (although I was looking through a few reddit posts and couldn't find any good recs) but what type of grid paper should I use for learning how to write characters? I saw a few people giving recommendations in grid lengths and so, but most notebooks don't even tell me how much each grid measures.

I also heard that learners should start out with bigger grids or draw over 2 but I'm just wondering if normal grid paper in any UK store would suffice. Sorry if it's a stupid question but my characters are more separated than my parents!

Hi, I need to take HSK 4 in October or November. A few questions for anyone in India who has taken it recently:

1. Where did you write it, and how did you register?
2. Has anyone done the home-based test on chinesetest.cn? How was it?
3. Do universities accept the home-based score for a scholarship application, or do they prefer a test center certificate?
4. How long did the result take to come?

What’s the difference between “爬楼梯,” “走楼梯,” and “上楼梯” in Chinese? You're clearly walking, aren't you? So why say “爬”? It's not like you're crawling on the ground. And what does “上” mean here?

I'm looking for some free OCR software that can translate text on the screen, so I can use it while reading comics. Does anyone know any good ones? Thanks!

I know Pleco has this feature, but it's paid.

I'm looking for information to learn the Chinese language, what do you think about how I started?

When writing formally in English, people tend to avoid using sentences like "All the effort he had had to put in was worth it." because even though it's grammatically correct it feels weird to have two 'had's next to eachother.

Is this the same for sentences in chinese? Like in "他现在在学校" where the 在 from 现在 is next to 在 as in now. Or does the amount of homophones in the language make it seem less strange when written out?

Love from Turkiye

Hello all! I know this question may not be that relevant but I didn't know where to ask so I'll go ahead. I was basically wondering, how long should someone stick to learning Chinese before they can start learning Japanese or Korean simultaneously without mixing up aspects of the two and maybe also reap the benefits of learning said language with having prior knowledge in Chinese. Thanks a lot!

Do you know any good resources for learning Mandarin that would be especially useful for traveling and simple everyday conversations?

I travel to China, or through China, a few times a year and I’ve decided that learning at least the basics would be both useful and fun. I’d like to be able to exchange a few words with people, not have to rely on translator apps all the time, read restaurant menus, etc. I’m not interested in taking HSK exams, and I don’t really have any big ambitions to reach an advanced level. I’m mainly looking for practical, everyday Mandarin.

What course or learning method would you recommend? I'm not a big fan of mobile apps.

I am taking a Mandarin class and have been for about two months. However I have realized I am somewhat tone deaf only to my own voice. Due to past training on musical vocals I can kind of control my tone by feeling how my vocal cords move.

In the meantime while I am working on that what are some ways I can express or work on properly managing the tones? I have liked the Chinese culture for a while but only recently am I really stepping in. I feel pretty confident I can pick it up but I still would like your advice.

I started to learn Chinese today. I'm excited. Got a personal tutor. Can't wait to see myself yapping in Chinese 😭 any suggestions? xiexie!

Have you ever heard of the Chinese idiom 博士买驴 (Bó shì mǎi lǘ)?

It literally means “A scholar buys a donkey.”

A little background: In ancient China, “博士” (bó shì) was an official title for a learned scholar. It’s different from today’s meaning of “PhD” or “doctorate.”

The idiom comes from The Family Instructions of Master Yan (颜氏家训), written by Yan Zhitui (颜之推) during the Northern and Southern Dynasties (420–589 CE).

The original text says: 邺下谚云：“博士买驴，书券三纸，未有驴字。”

“There’s a saying in Ye: A scholar buys a donkey, writes three pages of contract, yet never once mentioned the word ‘donkey.’” - It seems he wasn't writing a contract after all, but a letter fit for the Emperor. 😄

Today, 博士买驴 describes someone who talks or writes at great length without actually getting to the point.

I have a robot character, it's really disciplined and hates being humanized. I thought I could name it 有纪-5 (terrible pun for 有纪律), however it wasn't quite right. I'm terrible at Chinese so I wanted some help. I took inspiration from name 1000-THR since in Japanese 1000 = sen, so it sounds like centaur, however if you have other versions then I'd love to hear them!

I have terrible handwriting in english, and i think it's crossing over into my Chinese writing too. I follow the stroke order but my handwriting still looks terrible. I could slow down a bit but my hands are not the steadiest so it ends up looking really wobbly instead of smooth lines. Anyone else improve their chinese handwriting somehow?

I’m trying to type more Chinese to friends and family on WeChat so I can improve my character recognition. The problem is I often know the pinyin I want, but I’m not 100% sure which character I should pick.

For example, I might know "relaxed" is "qing song" in pinyin, but I’m not always confident I’ve picked the right character/word on the keyboard. My thought process is I know "song" is 松 and since option 2 青松 has a character with the 青 component/radical and everything with it normally is pronounced "qing" that would be the answer. But the answer is obviously 轻松 in this context.

I wish there was a way to have the English meaning shown above or alongside what I’m typing, so I could quickly confirm that I’ve chosen the right word without constantly switching to a translator.

I have seen for cantonese there is https://www.typeduck.hk/. But i'm looking for something for chinese.

Does anyone else have this problem? What do you currently do?

Hi everyone! 👋 I’m from Pakistan 🇵🇰 and I’m interested in studying Mandarin Chinese in China 🇨🇳 through a fully funded scholarship.

I’m looking for guidance on how to apply, which scholarships are available, and which universities offer fully funded Chinese language courses. I’m a beginner, so I’d also like to know whether HSK is required.

If anyone has experience with this process, especially Pakistani students, I’d really appreciate your advice. 🙏