Chinese
Learning Mandarin Chinese has been one of my hobbies since college. While both my parents spoke Chinese, I could not speak it at all growing up until they sent me to Tianjin for 2 summers to live with my aunt/uncle who couldn't speak any English. Ever since then I have been very motivated to continue improving my Chinese. I actually initially started using Anki probably in 2012 or 2013 for learning Chinese. Through medical school and residency I didn't have time to keep studying, but now as an attending I have started to get back into it as a hobby. Currently I can speak conversationally, but I would like to be able to speak and understand more advanced topics which is going to take a lot more work. Another big motivation is improving my Chinese so I can teach it effectively for my son (we have been primarily speaking to him in Chinese as he grows up!).
Baby/Toddler Learning
Some of our favorite resources for teaching our son. I have learned a ton just watching/reading things to him myself!
The very first YouTube channel we introduced our son to, when he was about 22 months old. They have a lot of very very simple videos that he really enjoyed, like learning his colors and numbers. Very great and low stimulation!
The second channel we found, this has been our son's go to channel for an extremely long time. Again we love the low stimulation, the host has really good positive energy, has a mainland accent, and the amount of content covered seems a little bit more than A Little Chinese. She also has LOTS of songs and they are also available on Spotify which our son really loves!
We found her early on but our son didn't like her videos as much at first, but as he has gotten older I think he understands them better. As we've started to watch them more I've realized how well she makes her videos, with good content that covers a lot of material. She has a Taiwanese accent. Really like her teaching style and the videos she includes to describe what she is talking about!
The most recent channel we have discovered - it is a little higher stimulation than the other channels (relies more on animation and music) but it keeps things basic. They also seem to have some more extensive stories that are 1+ hour that I can foresee our son really getting into and being able to watch repeatedly to keep learning. Though the stimulation seems a bit higher, the pacing is still relatively speaking pretty slow which is still great.
Adult Learning
I recently found two incredible resources for finding content directed at natives, which I feel will be a lot more immersive and also interesting for me to consume. So far focusing on improving reading via the webnovels (using Pleco's pop up dictionary while reading) and listening comprehension by watching Chinese anime!
Refold Mandarin Notion Website
Webnovels:
来自未来的日记 - the first webnovel I read. It is very short and definitely got me interested in reading more. It's about a girl who finds a journal that describes her death, so she subsequently tries to do everything in her power to avoid it. Later on it morphs into a love story. I enjoyed reading it and finding tons of new vocab words! Rating: 8/10 (1/5/26)
做树真的好难 - a story about a tree that turns into a human. It's a "yaoi" or "boy's love" type of story, and there is one part that has some sexually explicit stuff lol. I didn't mind it though since it was 22 chapters of pretty good difficulty for my reading level, and the story was interesting enough to keep me reading it. Rating: 6/10 (1/9/26)
Shows:
See my full show rankings on the Shows/Movies section.
Link Click - the first full season of Chinese anime I watched, and I was pretty blown away. Did not expect it to be so good. The level was actually fairly difficult for me - I had to pause frequently as I was focused on getting 100% comprehension but maybe I don't have to be so perfectionist in the future. They use a lot of idioms which made it more difficult than the typical day-to-day conversation I am used to. Definitely learned a lot and enjoyed the show while doing it! Rating: 9.5/10 (1/8/26)