Best of Hacking Chinese 2025

2025 has come to an end. Which were the most popular articles on Hacking Chinese last year? What were the most popular podcast episodes?

It’s time to summarise the year that was and highlight the things you really shouldn’t miss!

Tune in to the Hacking Chinese Podcast to listen to the related episode (#283):

Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and many other platforms!

Hacking Chinese in 2025: New articles, podcast episodes, resources, challenges, and… a member community on Discord!

Moreover, I managed to maintain my publishing schedule throughout 2025, reaching a streak of 283 consecutive weeks with one article and one podcast episode released each week. This brings the total to 562 published articles and 283 podcast episodes. Woho!

If you’re very observant, you’ll notice that the number of articles grows more slowly than the number of podcast episodes. This is because while each podcast episode is entirely new, I often rewrite, merge, replace, upgrade, or otherwise reorganise articles to refine and consolidate the content on Hacking Chinese. Some articles on the site were written 15 years ago and badly need an upgrade!

I’ve also kept updating Hacking Chinese Resources and run one challenge per month over at Hacking Chinese Challenges, even if my own participation has been lower than ever.

A year ago, I launched a member community on Discord. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I wanted a way to interact more directly with people who enrol in my courses. I had a forum for Unlocking Chinese for years, but it wasn’t ideal, so instead of doing the same thing for the other courses, I decided to create one larger community on Discord.

Over the year, more than a hundred people have joined. Students can share their progress, discuss interesting topics, and get to know fellow learners. I also enjoy interacting with students more directly, and I benefit from comments on early drafts and discussions of ideas for upcoming articles. Overall, I’m happy with how the community has developed.

If you want to join, please respond to the email you received welcoming you to one of my courses (it doesn’t matter which course it is). If you can’t find the email, just send me an email, and I’ll help you out!

How was your 2025? Did you reach any goals or milestones last year?

What were your goals for 2025? How did things turn out? Did you achieve any big milestones over the past year, perhaps something you’ve been aiming for since you started learning? Maybe you finally accomplished something that once felt out of reach. Or perhaps you didn’t quite hit your targets but learnt something useful along the way.

Whatever your year looked like, share your experience in the comments below and let us know how it went!

Previous Best of Hacking Chinese articles

Best articles on Hacking Chinese 2025: Popular vote

五 Zi.Tools: A powerful free resource for exploring Chinese characters

Zi.Tools: A powerful free resource for exploring Chinese characters

Zi.Tools is a great free resource for exploring Chinese characters. See what it offers and how you can use it to boost your learning!

Ideally, resources for learning Chinese would be both great and free, but you usually only get one of the two (or neither in many cases). This is a rare exception, though, because Zi.Tools is extremely useful and completely free. It’s by far the best free resource to look up information about characters that I know of!

I’m happy this article was received well and hope it contributes to more people finding out about Zi.Tools. If you haven’t tried it out yet, you should!

Tune in to the Hacking Chinese Podcast to listen to the related episode (#249):
Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and many other platforms!

四 Classroom Mandarin: Essential expressions for learning Chinese in Chinese

Classroom Mandarin: Essential expressions for learning Chinese in Chinese

The fastest way to learn to communicate in Chinese is to learn classroom expressions first. Master essential phrases that help you learn Mandarin without relying on English!

If you’re taking classes, classroom Mandarin is one of the easiest upgrades you can make. These are the phrases you need to run (or survive) a lesson in Chinese: “How do you say…?”, “What does this mean?”, “Can you repeat?”, “Please speak more slowly”, and so on.

This matters because it’s still common in formal education to do most of the learning in English. Students can spend years talking about Chinese in English: grammar explanations, pronunciation, instructions, and classroom management.

A simple step towards learning Chinese in Chinese is to switch the things you say every single lesson to Chinese. There’s basically no reason not to, except that you might not know the phrases you need, or you can’t retrieve them quickly when you’re on the spot.

That’s what this article provides: a clearly organised list of essential classroom expressions for both teachers and students, designed to make it easy to start conducting more of your learning in Chinese.

Tune in to the Hacking Chinese Podcast to listen to the related episode (#263):
Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and many other platforms!

三 Using AI chatbots for low-stress Mandarin speaking practice

Using AI chatbots for low-stress Mandarin speaking practice

You don’t need to be fluent to speak Mandarin with AI. These beginner-friendly chatbot activities offer low-pressure practice that builds confidence, comprehension, and conversation skills.

Most advice about learning languages with AI assumes you can already hold a conversation. For Chinese, that’s a problem. If you only know 50 or 100 words, it’s hard to keep a chatbot exchange going, and it’s even harder to take the initiative.

This article is for beginners and lower-intermediate learners who want speaking practice without pressure. The activities I suggest don’t require you to produce a lot of Chinese, but they still give you plenty of meaningful input and a clear way to start responding.

I also address something many learners feel but rarely talk about: speaking anxiety can be real, even when talking with a chatbot. It sounds strange, but it’s not uncommon! The goal here is to lower the barrier and make speaking feel doable.

To that end, I share three simple chatbot activities you can use right away to build confidence and gradually move towards more natural conversation.

Tune in to the Hacking Chinese Podcast to listen to the related episode (#259).

Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and many other platforms!

二 Learning Chinese through comprehensible input

Learning Chinese through comprehensible input

Can you really learn Mandarin through listening and reading alone? What is comprehensible input, and how do you get enough of it? And how do speaking, writing, grammar, and flashcards fit in?

Learning Chinese through comprehensible input starts with a simple idea: you can only get Chinese into your head through listening and reading, and if that input is understandable in context, your brain gradually figures out how the language works.

“Comprehensible” means you can connect the sounds or characters to meaning through context: a teacher pointing and saying 我 and 你, a picture or a map that makes 中国 obvious, a story where the gist is clear even if you miss a few words. The point is to understand Chinese as Chinese, not through English.

In this article, I explain what comprehensible input is, why it matters so much, and how it can look in practice. I also outline the major variations of input-based approaches, from stricter “Chinese only” methods to more flexible versions that allow some explicit study as support. Whatever your preferred method, the takeaway is the same: the more Chinese you can understand, the more you will learn.

Tune in to the Hacking Chinese Podcast to listen to the related episode (#264):
Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and many other platforms!

一 The best YouTube channels for learning Chinese (2025)

The best YouTube channels for learning Chinese in 2025

Videos are ideal for learning Chinese. The visual element makes the content more comprehensible and engaging, resulting in effective and enjoyable learning. But what videos should you watch? What are the best YouTube Channels?

This article took an awful lot of time to compile. I worked through a huge number of channels and tried to sort out which ones are genuinely useful rather than just polished or popular. The result is a practical shortlist you can trust, whether you’re a zero beginner or already at an intermediate or advanced level.

I’m happy but not surprised that this article turned out to be the most popular of 2025. There’s so much content on YouTube that it’s virtually impossible to find suitable content in Chinese at your level. Until this article was published, that is!

Tune in to the Hacking Chinese Podcast to listen to the related episode (#240):
Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and many other platforms!

Best articles on Hacking Chinese 2025: Editor’s choice

I’ve written almost all the articles on Hacking Chinese (there are a handful of guest articles). When selecting what to write, I try to balance what I think is important with what people want to read, although I’m usually able to find topics that cover both.

Naturally, the topics also need to interest me; otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to write so much about learning Mandarin. Below are the articles I liked the most from 2025.

五 Love and language: Challenges and opportunities in learning Chinese with a partner

Love and language: Challenges and opportunities in learning Chinese with a partner

Some say that dating a native speaker is the ultimate shortcut to fluency. “You’ll learn effortlessly with a teacher always by your side!” But is learning Chinese with a partner really the silver bullet it’s often made out to be?

This is one of those topics that matters to a lot of learners, especially if you stick with Chinese long-term. Many people start because they want to communicate with someone they love, and many others end up in relationships where Chinese is part of daily life.

A Chinese-speaking partner can absolutely help, but only if you approach the situation the right way. If you start treating your partner like a language tool, you’re likely to create friction, resentment, or simply a dynamic that makes both the relationship and the learning worse.

Drawing on more than a decade of experience learning Chinese with a Chinese-speaking partner, I share what actually helps: how to avoid the most common traps, how to introduce more Chinese naturally (assuming that you’ve been speaking mostly English so far), and how to balance the language goals with the relationship so both can thrive.

Tune in to the Hacking Chinese Podcast to listen to the related episode (#237):

Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and many other platforms!

四 16 reasons to learn to write Chinese characters by hand

16 reasons to learn to write Chinese characters by hand

Does handwriting still have a place in modern Chinese learning? Let’s explore 8 popular arguments in favour of writing characters by hand, each critically examined to see which ones truly stand up to scrutiny.

Handwriting tends to trigger strong feelings. Both students and teachers often have an intuitive sense that writing by hand must be important, and they can come up with plenty of reasons to support that gut reaction. The problem is that a long list of reasons is not the same as a strong case.

In this article, I examine sixteen arguments people commonly bring up when they are told they probably should not prioritise handwriting, and then test how well those arguments hold up. Most of them turn out to be weak, overstated, or at least less persuasive than they sound at first.

As so often in language learning, the real issue is opportunity cost. You can almost always find some benefit to any activity, but the right question is whether it’s the best use of your limited study time compared with everything else you could do. If you understand why you want to learn handwriting, and whether your reasons are actually good ones, it becomes much easier to make a deliberate choice that matches your goals.

Tune in to the Hacking Chinese Podcast to listen to the related episodes (#256 and #260). Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube (link to part 2) and many other platforms!

三 7 characteristics of a great Chinese tutor or private teacher

7 characteristics of a great Chinese tutor or private teacher

A great tutor can transform your Chinese learning, but how do you know if a tutor is good? Let’s explore the key qualities that make a tutor truly effective.

How do you know if your tutor is good? This question is surprisingly hard to answer, unless you already know much more about language learning and teaching than most students. Of course, “good” is partly subjective, but there are a few qualities that are almost always desirable.

In this article, I go through seven characteristics of a great tutor. You can use this list to evaluate your current teacher or to determine if the one you’ve done trial lessons with is good enough to keep. Almost no teacher will meet all the criteria I discuss in the article, but if your teacher misses too many, you should probably look for a new one.

Tune in to the Hacking Chinese Podcast to listen to the related episode (#255).

Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and many other platforms!

二 16 myths about learning Chinese that are holding you back

16 myths about learning Chinese that are holding you back

Believing the wrong things about learning Chinese can waste time and lead you astray. Let’s explore 16 myths that might be holding you back!

This article is a collection of myths I’ve seen and heard over and over again, both from students and from well-meaning advice online. The problem with myths is that if your approach to learning Chinese is based on false premises, you will make the wrong decisions about what to learn and how.

Some myths make you overestimate shortcuts, others make you underestimate what actually works, and quite a few push you towards methods that feel productive but do not hold up over time. The common thread is opportunity cost: even if something is not completely useless, it can still be a poor choice if it crowds out activities that would help you more.

Tune in to the Hacking Chinese Podcast to listen to the related episodes (#253 and #268):

Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube (part 1, part 2) and many other platforms!

一 What a big Rubik’s Cube taught me about Chinese characters

What a big Rubik’s Cube taught me about Chinese characters

How small can Chinese characters be while still being legible? How much information do they contain per unit area? And what can a big Rubik’s Cube teach us about Chinese characters?

This article started as a fun crossover project between two of my hobbies, and I expected it to stay light and mostly be about cubes. Instead, it turned into a surprisingly deep dive into what makes Chinese characters readable in the first place.

It’s obviously possible to use either a large number of cubes to write whatever you want, including Chinese characters, or use very big cubes to do the same, but the question is, how small can the cubes be while still allowing you to write legible Chinese characters?

I never expected this article to become very popular (and it wasn’t), but it’s by far my favourite from 2025. I’ve also received a disproportionate number of comments regarding this article, so while it might not have appealed to the average learner, some people seem to have found it as interesting to read as I found it interesting to write!

Tune in to the Hacking Chinese Podcast to listen to the related episode (#273).

Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and many other platforms!

Best podcast episodes on Hacking Chinese 2025: Popular vote

Despite most listeners finding the podcast through the website or newsletter, which link to both articles and episodes, the popularity of individual episodes doesn’t always follow the popularity of the articles they are embedded in. Some topics are better suited for written articles, while others work better in audio form, but this doesn’t always show up in the statistics.

Anyway, the most popular episodes overlap with the most popular articles to a certain extent, but far from as much as one would think! Below, I’ve listed the top five podcast episodes from last year, determined by the number of plays. If a related article has already been summarised above, I’ll simply note that to keep things concise.

五 Episode 276: 4, 3, 2, 1: Fluency! A great technique to boost your Mandarin speaking ability

4, 3, 2, 1: Fluency! A great technique to boost your Mandarin speaking ability

Do you want to speak Mandarin fluently, no matter what your level is? Use the 4/3/2 technique to build confidence and flow!

The appeal of this episode is simple: it gives you a concrete way to practise fluency on purpose, rather than just hope you get there sometime in the distant future. A lot of learners care about fluency both as “getting better” in general and as being able to speak more smoothly, faster, and with less hesitation in the moment.

The 4-3-2 technique does exactly that. You repeat the same message three times, but with less and less time each round. Because the content stays the same, your brain can stop worrying about what to say and start improving how you say it. The result is that you sound noticeably more confident and coherent by the third attempt, even without new vocabulary or detailed correction.

It’s a simple exercise, but it works, and that combination of practicality and a clear promise makes it easy to see why it’s one of the most popular episodes.

Tune in to the Hacking Chinese Podcast to listen to the related episode (#276):
Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and many other platforms!

四 Episode 267: How to improve your Mandarin speaking skills with a tutor

How to improve your Mandarin speaking skills with a tutor

Most Chinese learners want one thing above all: to speak better. Many turn to a teacher for guidance, but that is only the first step. True progress depends on how you work with that teacher.

Many learners turn to a tutor, hoping it will automatically solve their speaking problems. Sometimes it does, but often it doesn’t, and that gap between expectation and reality is exactly why I think this episode resonated with many of you.

A lot of students end up frustrated because they can’t tell what “good tutoring” looks like. Some tutors default to what they like teaching, not what you actually need. Others are supportive and pleasant, but don’t push you in ways that lead to measurable progress. Feeling good in class matters, but it’s not the same thing as improving.

This episode is meant to make tutoring feel less mysterious and more actionable. It helps you figure out what to look for in a tutor, what to do during lessons to target speaking ability, and how to get real value for the time and money you invest.

Tune in to the Hacking Chinese Podcast to listen to the related episode (#267):
Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and many other platforms!

三 Episode 240: The best YouTube channels for learning Chinese

The best YouTube channels for learning Chinese in 2025

Videos are ideal for learning Chinese. The visual element makes the content more comprehensible and engaging, resulting in effective and enjoyable learning. But what videos should you watch? What are the best YouTube Channels?

This episode overlaps with the most popular article from 2025. The text below was copied from that entry.

This article took an awful lot of time to compile. I worked through a huge number of channels and tried to sort out which ones are genuinely useful rather than just polished or popular. The result is a practical shortlist you can trust, whether you’re a zero beginner or already at an intermediate or advanced level.

I’m happy but not surprised that this episode turned out to be the most popular of 2025. There’s so much content on YouTube that it’s virtually impossible to find suitable content in Chinese at your level. Until this article was published, that is!

Tune in to the Hacking Chinese Podcast to listen to the related episode (#240):
Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and many other platforms!

二 Episode 233: The three roads to mastering Chinese

The three roads to mastering Chinese

You might assume there are many roads to mastery in Chinese, but in truth, there are only three.

In this article, I argue that while “mastery” of Chinese sounds like an abstract goal, it becomes much clearer when you think in terms of how you will realistically accumulate the huge amount of meaningful exposure and practice it requires.

In practice, there are only three main paths:

1. Using Chinese in your job
2. Cultivating a genuine interest
3. Having your social life in Chinese

These paths can overlap, but I’m sure you need to follow at least one of them to truly master Mandarin!

Tune in to the Hacking Chinese Podcast to listen to the related episode (#233):

Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and many other platforms!

一 Episode 236: The Input Pyramid: Chinese Listening for Any Situation

The Input Pyramid: Chinese Listening for Any Situation

Most students of Chinese find listening comprehension a challenge. To truly become a fluent listener, use the Input Pyramid to rethink and upgrade your listening practice!

This was the most popular podcast episode of 2025 with some margin. I think it’s because it’s both widely applicable and immediately practical. It also likely benefited from extra exposure through video and from being tied to The Fluent Listener.

The core idea is that you make faster progress when you stop treating “hard listening” as the default. The Input Pyramid is a simple way of choosing listening material by difficulty, so you spend most of your time on content that is easy enough to follow (extensive listening), add a smaller slice that is still comprehensible but demands full attention (engaged listening), and reserve intensive listening for those times when you are prepared to slow down and use support like transcripts and dictionaries.

Many learners do the reverse, which makes listening feel exhausting and limits how much time they can keep at it. Rebalancing your listening like this makes it easier to build the sound-meaning connections that actually carry over to real conversations.

You can also tune in to the Hacking Chinese Podcast to listen to the related episode (#235):

Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and many other platforms!

Popular pages

The above list only contains articles along with their podcast episodes, but there are also pages on Hacking Chinese that are much more popular than most articles. Pages are what I use to organise articles, so it’s one step up in the hierarchy. You can see most pages in the top menu or the sidebar (bottom on mobile). Here are the top five most visited pages (disregarding the front page, blog and archive pages, because those have, by far and for obvious reasons, the most views):

1. Articles for beginners
2. Courses on Hacking Chinese
3. Unlocking Chinese: The Ultimate Guide for Beginners
4. Hacking Chinese Pronunciation: Speaking with Confidence
5. Hacking Chinese: A Practical Guide to Learning Mandarin

Thank you and happy New Year!

Last but certainly not least, I want to thank all of you who visit, read, listen to or otherwise engage with the content that I create. It’s feedback from people who find Hacking Chinese helpful that motivates me to keep the website and podcast going. So, happy new year, and let’s hope 2026 will be a good year for you and for Hacking Chinese!