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318 - 9 questions about Pinyin and Chinese pronunciation
Season 1 Episode 318
Learning to pronounce Mandarin can be tricky, and if you misunderstand the link between spoken sounds and Pinyin spelling, it gets a lot worse. Let’s…
1 week, 2 days ago
317 - Getting the most out of Hacking Chinese in 2026 (back-to-school course discounts)
Season 1 Episode 317
There are over 500 articles and more than 1 million words on Hacking Chinese. How are you supposed to absorb all that information and inspiration as …
2 weeks, 2 days ago
316 - How to nail dictation tests in Chinese: A guide to 听写/聽寫 (tīngxǐe)
Season 1 Episode 316
Dictation tests, or 听写/聽寫 (tīngxiě), are common in Chinese courses, but many students struggle with them. Here is a guide for how to nail any dictati…
3 weeks, 2 days ago
315 - Communicative handwriting: Writing Chinese with a real purpose
Season 1 Episode 315
Flashcards can teach you to write Chinese characters, but they can be boring and hide problems. Communicative handwriting is more engaging and prepar…
4 weeks, 2 days ago
314 - How to create mnemonics for general, abstract or overlapping character components
Season 1 Episode 314
Mountains, trees and rocks are easy to use in mnemonics. But what do you do with character components whose meanings are general, abstract or overlap…
1 month ago
313 - Why you should listen to the Hacking Chinese Podcast
Season 1 Episode 313
Listening to a podcast about learning Chinese is not the same as learning Chinese, so why spend your limited time on the Hacking Chinese Podcast?
#lea…
1 month, 1 week ago
312 - The Chinese iceberg: Why speaking more isn’t enough to speak better
Season 1 Episode 312
90% of an iceberg is underwater, yet we mostly pay attention to the bit that sticks up. The same is true for proficiency in Chinese: speaking ability…
1 month, 2 weeks ago
311 - New book: Hacking Chinese: The Snake Collection
Season 1 Episode 311
I have published a book! It's called Hacking Chinese: the Snake Collection and contains articles I wrote in 2025, the Year of the Snake. The articles…
1 month, 3 weeks ago
310 - 30 minutes of podcast, 3 minutes of Chinese
Season 1 Episode 310
Most learners know they should “listen more”, but what they listen to matters. To improve, you need to make sense of spoken Mandarin, not listen to p…
2 months ago
309 - Dealing with Chinese characters you keep mixing up
Season 1 Episode 309
When we first start learning Chinese, each new character is hard to learn, but as we learn more, it gets easier. But a new problem soon appears: Mixi…
2 months, 1 week ago