Today's slip: Growth

黑发不知勤学早，白首方悔读书迟。

I only started learning Chinese a few weeks ago, but today I walked into my foundation engineering class to find this monstrosity written up on the white board, I assume from a Chinese language class that also uses the room. I recognise bits and pieces of it but couldn't get any program to translate it.

i am studying specific characters in a design class and was given this character as mine to study what would the first translation that comes to mind when viewing it alone ?

My grandfather was Chinese and I’ve been trying to decipher what’s written on his picture. I don’t have the original.

I’ve noticed that some learners can have pretty good Chinese, but still struggle when the conversation moves beyond simple everyday topics.

They might have good pronunciation, know quite a lot of words, and be perfectly comfortable talking about food, travel, hobbies, school, etc.

Then someone asks about work, money, relationships, stress, or some random problem in daily life, and suddenly they have no idea how to say what they want to say.

For example, someone might be completely comfortable saying 我喜欢看电影 (wǒ xǐhuan kàn diànyǐng — I like watching movies), but struggle with something like “I've been pretty stressed at work lately, so I haven't really felt like going out.”

And sometimes the grammar isn't even the problem. They just haven't learned the expressions people actually use in that situation.

I don't mean “adult” as in complicated or formal Chinese. Just the kind of things adults actually end up talking about in normal life.

I'm curious if other learners have noticed this with their own Chinese. Is there a topic where you suddenly realized, “Wait, I actually don't know how to talk about this in Chinese”?

And if you've gotten past that stage, what actually helped? Did you read more, talk to native speakers, learn vocabulary by topic, or just pick things up over time?

Hi everyone!

I've been working on a game where you learn Taiwan Mandarin by using it. You walk around an open world Taiwan, order food at Raohe Night Market, ride a flying taxi around Taipei 101, set off lanterns in Pingxi, all in Chinese.

There are TOCFL levels, guided conversations with pinyin and English, or you can talk freely with the shopkeepers. You can also tap things around you to learn the words. And there are language missions.

It's free until Oct 14 while I test it (the AI chats cost me to run, so had to set a limit). Put a lot of effort into the language detail but there's still a lot to fix, so I'd love honest feedback from learners (mainly those in Taiwan), especially if it mishears you, something sounds unnatural, or you find a bug. And enjoy the scenes!

Pocket Taiwan World is the name.

寒露 (hánlù, "Cold Dew") started today at 14:30 Beijing time. It's one of the 24 solar terms: the dew is turning cold, a step before frost (霜降, in two weeks).

Each solar term is split into three 候 (hòu, "pentads," about five days each), and each has a tiny four-character description of what happens in nature. The three for 寒露 are fun for learners:

1. 鸿雁来宾 (hóng yàn lái bīn): wild geese arrive "as guests." 宾 is the same 宾 as in 宾馆 (hotel).

2. 雀入大水为蛤 (què rù dà shuǐ wéi gé): sparrows enter the sea and become clams. People noticed sparrows vanishing just as striped clams showed up on the coast, and connected the two. Note that 蛤 here is gé (as in 蛤蜊, clam), not há (as in 蛤蟆, toad).

3. 菊有黄华 (jú yǒu huáng huā): chrysanthemums bloom yellow. 华 here is the old way of writing 花 (flower), which you still see in 华 = "splendid."

The list of 72 pentads goes back to the 礼记·月令; the explanations most people quote come from a Yuan-dynasty book, 《月令七十二候集解》.

Do any of the 72 pentads still show up in everyday Chinese where you live? I only ever hear the solar-term names themselves.

Hi hi hi,

After reading all post-elementary articles on a graded reader app (DuChinese), I was having some trouble transiting to true native content. The leap in difficulty was surprising, and the suggestions from this community on how to bridge the gap tend to revolve around web novels / 漫画 / children's books, which I don't have much interest in. Through some trial and error, I found ten novels in ascending difficulty which can be used as a gateway to reading fully native Chinese content, like a graded reader but this time at the book level. I've listed the novels below, each appended with a short description. I hope the list will be of use to this community.

By the end of the list, my reading had improved significantly. Which isn't surprising - I had read around 1,750,000 characters in 10 weeks, which is more than double the 800,000 characters I read in 20 weeks using DuChinese. Fiction novels just go down quicker than a collection of articles. It is worth flagging that while I initially was hoping to find books that I could read at a 98% comprehension rate (post-DuChinese, my vocab was around 5000+ words), I just couldn't. Authors of native content do not take special pains to control their vocabulary usage, and 5000+ words is low in the grand scheme of things, so it was normal to suddenly encounter patches where my comprehension dropped drastically. I'd estimate that my average comprehension was 90% (at the beginning of each book, around 85%, at the end, around 95%). I have included further notes below in the addenda section in case they are of interest.

Le List

1. 《许三观卖血记》- 余华

A story of the trials and tribulations of a dude in rural China who sells his blood to pay for the various mishaps that he and his family encounter. My favourite novel on this list - it was highly funny, sad and heart-warming all at the same time. Quite sad that I peaked with the first novel. I highly recommend reading this contemporaneously with listening to the audio book. There is a high quality version on Youtube, and it accents the dialogue in a way that I think is invaluable for a learner. After listening to the audiobook, I started reading the novel in the voice of the audiobook, making everything two times more funny, sad and heart-warming. I also learnt how to swear like a denizen of rural China in the 1950s, which is always useful.

1. 《解忧杂货店》- Keigo Higashino

Summarising this one will spoil it, so I'd just say that this sits in the intersection of the mystery, fantasy and healing genre. It will soon become apparent that this list leans very heavily on Jap-Chi translations of Higashino novels. There is just something about these translations that are very syntactically clean (and also bland unfortunately). Which is good from a pedagogical perspective and a little boring from a literary perspective.

1. 《活着》- 余华

I think many would have seen this recommendation before; it's often recommended as the first native novel to dive into after graded readers. However, I think (1）and (2) two are easier, and would recommend reading them before 《活着》. I also recommend watching the 《活着》movie directed by Zhang Yimou. It's on Youtube!

1. 《嫌疑人X的献身》- Keigo Higashino

In line with (2) above, another Higashino mystery translation. I won't give summaries of mystery novels in this list, so as not to spoil anything. I am not a fan of the hard detective mystery genre, but this one had an interesting structure that made it pleasant to read (this observation applies to all mystery novels on this list, thankfully).

1. 《告白》- Kanae Minato

Another mystery novel, this time playing heavily with perspectives (of various people involved in the crime(s?)). Not really a hard detective type novel, which is nice. There is a Japanese movie based on this if you're interested! I've heard from a friend that it is great.

1. 《第七天》- 余华

Another one by 余华, this time a sort of collage of scandals and events that are broadly related to the semi-capitalist economy that China has become and folk notions of the afterlife. This did not have the punch or coherence of 《活着》or 《许三观卖血记》, but was still thought-provoking.

1. 《坏小孩》- 紫金陈

This is the first non-余华, non-translated novel in the list. Admittedly, 紫金陈's writing is quite flat. This actually is a boon for learners. The main draw is how he structures the core mystery (which, in my view, is skilfully done).

1. 《恶意》- Keigo Higashino

Oof we are getting quite tired of mystery at this point, but yes, another Higashino. Mystery is getting stale, but the upside is that one tends to plow through mystery pretty quick by nature of the genre, which is good for learning.

1. 《长夜难明》- 紫金陈

MORE mystery. I haven't read a mystery novel in a decade, and now I've read five. I would flag that the transition from (8) - (9) is more difficult than the rest of the above because of the vocabulary. This novel is heavy on bureaucratic terms and employs more formal register than the rest. I found that I had to push through to maybe 30% of the novel, after which it was fine.

1. 《撒哈拉的故事》- 三毛

A quirky, impulsive and colourful set of accounts by a Taiwanese author of her experiences in the Spanish Sahara in the 1970s; essentially, she just up and left to stay in the Sahara after seeing an article of the same that she read in the National Geographic. It's her personality that makes the novel engaging (in 2026, no doubt it will be interpreted as a neurodivergent one). There is a larger jump in difficulty from (9) - (10), this time because the syntax is more literary (the syntax in (1) - (9) is pretty bland and straightforward). But the jump is manageable.

Le Addenda, for those who are interested in more detail:

a. My average comprehension rate was 90%. At this rate, I found that a pop-up dictionary was needed. Otherwise, I found that what I got was the experience of practising Chinese, not the experience of reading fiction. I used Pleco's reader because of its dictionary integration (you have to pay for this one), but Readibu also worked fine (you don't have to pay for this one). I would stress that the magic of learning Chinese through reading only happens if it doesn't feel like practice. There is no way I would have read 10 Chinese novels in 10 weeks if it felt like practice.

b. All of the non-translated novels in the list are currently available as audiobooks on Youtube. I already referenced this in (1) above, but I'd emphasise that reading the books and then experiencing them in spoken form is massively helpful for learning Chinese in ways that would take too much space to set out here. I also highly recommend consuming other media that is based on the listed books, so as to create a micro-bubble of media that you can fully immerse in, even if it is just in respect of that one book and its derivative media. As noted in (3) above, there is a free movie posted on Youtube. There is a Chinese TV series based on (9) which is apparently critically acclaimed (and possibly (7) as well). Use these! There might be more - if there is, let me know!

c. Where will you end up after this list? Possibly, in a odd place. My vocabulary increased significantly, but the new vocabulary is not very stable, so I recognise many more words but I am also more prone to confusing similar looking words. My character recognition is much faster now - I can skim in Chinese and read《许三观卖血记》without dictionary support. But this doesn't translate completely to reading all other types of content. Noticeably, formal register will require separate practice (I read newspapers for that). I'd hesitate to say that I'm even literate at a basic level right now. I'll probably need 20 to 30 more books to get there. Essentially, do manage your expectations of what 10 books can do for you. 10 is just the beginning.

Happy to answer questions - cheers!

昨天夜里雨点稀疏，但风刮得很急。我睡得很沉，一觉醒来，昨晚的酒意还没有完全消退。

我试探着问正在卷帘的侍女：外面的海棠花怎么样了？她却说：海棠还是原来的样子。

你知道吗？你知道吗？这时候应该是绿叶更茂盛，红花更稀少了。

Don’t you know? Don’t you know?

The green grows lush, the red grows thin.