Student Q&A: April, 2025: Reading with Pinyin, Chinese texts on your phone, and deciphering handwriting

Should you read Chinese with or without Pinyin? What are the pros and cons of reading on your phone? And how do you learn to read Chinese people’s handwriting?

This week’s podcast episode is a reader and listener Q&A, where I answer three questions about reading in Chinese.

This time, I’m answering questions about:

• Should you use Pinyin when reading Chinese?
• What are the pros and cons of reading on your phone?
• How can you learn to read other people’s handwriting?

Tune in to the Hacking Chinese Podcast to listen to the related episode (#244):

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

Links to things mentioned in the introduction

• Chinese reading challenge, April 2025
• This month’s challenge is sponsored by mylingua

Links for question 1: Reading with Pinyin

• Focusing on Chinese tones without being distracted by Pinyin

Focusing on Chinese tones without being distracted by Pinyin

Links for question 2: Reading Chinese on your phone

• The new paperless revolution in Chinese reading (by David Moser)
• Why you should read Chinese on your phone

Why you should read Chinese on your phone

Links for question 3: Reading handwritten Chinese

• Do you have to learn to write Chinese characters by hand?
• Learning to read handwritten Chinese
• Learning to understand regionally accented Mandarin

Learning to read handwritten Chinese