Chinese Learning Resources

Enriching Your Chinese Studies Online

Whether you're new at learning Mandarin or speaking fluently, there is a wealth of online materials to help you support your learning. But another important use of the internet for learning language is connecting to other learners, sharing you experiences, asking questions, and getting a broader understanding of the culture and country the language evolved in. Below are some initial suggestions for enriching your Chinese studies online.

Asia Society’s China Learning Initiatives has also developed and collected a trove of resources over the last 10 years, which you can also view below.

Know of something that’s great but not included in these lists? Help us out and send us a quick note with a link to your suggestion and a brief explanation on why you think it’s important others know about it. If we post it, we’ll list your name as having contributed it!

Resources

Discussion Forums

Below are the resources we found useful or interesting. If you find others, please share them with us, and we'll add them to this collection!

Reddit has a ton of forums where you can ask questions and start discussions, listed below by forum title:

One particularly interesting Reddit thread is an AMA (‘Ask Me Anything’) with Chinese Pod (which, by the way, should be on your list of Podcasts already. If it’s not, add it!). They took questions from Redditors and then posted the highlights on their blog, entitled ‘Six Chinese Study Hacks from Our Reddit AMA.’

Speaking of hacking, there’s a whole website devoted to Hacking Chinese!

Stack Exchange has a section for Chinese learning, too.

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Chinese Learning Apps and Sites

Below are the resources we found useful or interesting. If you find others, please share them with us, and we'll add them to this collection!

We don’t like to endorse one service or site over another, but since the tragic demise of popular Chinese-English (more-than-)dictionary *nciku, we have found some to be pretty solid surrogates:

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General Learning Tools

Below are the resources we found useful or interesting. If you find others, please share them with us, and we'll add them to this collection!

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News and Specialized Topics

Below are the resources we found useful or interesting. If you find others, please share them with us, and we'll add them to this collection!

For those of you with a more political bent, Asia Society’s own ChinaFile is a great resource.
Sinocism is also a firehose of information about all things happening in China.
There are tons of sites that help you keep up with cutting-edge pop culture (especially internet culture). Our top picks are:
- ChinaSmack: All articles are translated into English from Chinese media sources, and if you hover over the English text, the original Chinese text pops up. This is a great way to advance your reading!
- TeaLeafNation's crew scans Chinese social media for reaction to big news events and delivers you a broad variety of Chinese voices across the spectrum.
Green Honey is a great site that crunches data on various aspects of Chinese.
If history is your thing, check this out: China History Podcast
Any aspiring legal professionals out there? Ever wanted a source of solid insights into Chinese Law? Look no further than China Law Blog.