Podcast

Welcome to the I’m Learning Mandarin Podcast, now available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google and Anchor. The goal of this podcast is to help you learn how to learn Chinese. Each episode I discuss a new topic, drawing on my experience and guest interviews. Please subscribe on your favoured podcast provider and leave a review. To suggest ideas for future episodes please get in touch via the contact page.

The history of Chinese attitudes to Mandarin speaking foreigners – I'm Learning Mandarin

My free Mandarin learning ebook: https://www.peakmandarin.com/free-ebook Follow this Chinese podcast along with a transcript and translation: imlearningmandarin.com — In today’s episode, I talk about the recent history of Chinese attitudes towards foreigners speaking Mandarin and how this differs from the English-speaking world. It’s always struck me that the way Chinese people react to foreigners speaking their language can have a major impact on our learning journey. On the one hand, it feels nice to be showered with praised as a beginner for saying a few basic words. But on the other hand, this can get old quickly. And the culture of treating foreign Chinese speaking as an entertainment spectacle, with international Chinese speaking competitions broadcast on TV to a whole nation can seem odd for learners who’ve never encountered it before. So today I discuss the origins of these attitudes and the reasons why Chinese people tend to react the way they do when they hear non-native speakers speak Mandarin.
  1. The history of Chinese attitudes to Mandarin speaking foreigners
  2. The American professor who performed live comedy in Mandarin in front of a billion people
  3. This bully nearly made me give up Chinese!
  4. Building an app to achieve native-level Chinese reading skills: Interview with Emmanuel Roche
  5. Three Things You Need To Know Before Studying Chinese in Taiwan (中文播客)

Need help with Mandarin speaking?

If you’re studying Mandarin and are struggling with your speaking skills, our free Peak Mandarin newsletter shares practical tips on how to become fluent in Chinese. ​It’s based on exactly what my friend Will Hart and I did to teach ourselves the language while working and studying full-time in the UK.

Subscribe to the newsletter on this link and we’ll also send you my 50-page eBook, Lessons from a Chinese Learning Phenomenon, telling the story of how we went from zero to fluency. And how you can too!