Author Archive | Alan Park

5 Basic Chinese Sentence Structures to Ease You into Grammar

One of the comforts of Chinese grammar is the straightforward and logical sentence patterns. And thankfully, many of them are based on the formula you already know. Ah, the ever-so-basic but ever-so-reliable SVO pattern. Here are five really simple Chinese …

Chinese Vocabulary Guide: 212 Essential Words and 64 Resources

One of the best ways to work on your fluency in Chinese is to build your vocabulary. The more solid a foundation you have, the better you will be able to understand and navigate conversations. This post will take …

51 Best Chinese Movies You Can’t Miss [Updated for 2023]

Chinese movies can be as entertaining as they are educational. Do you enjoy epic battles, poetic love scenes or offbeat comedy? Then dive into these masterpieces of Chinese cinema—and immerse yourself in Chinese in the process. Keep scrolling to check …

10 Famous Chinese Actors You Oughta Know, Plus Their Most Iconic Movies

With hit movies like “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “In the Mood for Love,” Chinese actors have earned fans from all over the world. In fact, many of them are household names already, with a track …

17 Awesome Chinese Blogs for Chinese Learners of All Levels

It’s hard to learn Chinese by yourself sometimes, but blogs can make online learning feel a lot more fun and personal. They tend to share lots of great resources that you can incorporate in your study time, as well as …

The Chinese Grammar Structures List for Beginners: 13 Patterns to Get You Started

Basic Chinese sentence structure follows the Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) pattern. For example, we say 我爱你 (wǒ ài nǐ) — I love you in Chinese with the same sentence structure we would in English. Although basic Chinese grammar is often described as …

8 Ways to Say Hello in Chinese Like a Native

Do you know that awkward moment that every Chinese learner experiences? When you realize that “nǐ hǎo” is actually not how Chinese people say hello? If you don’t, then this post is for you: now you can say hello in …

What Is Pinyin? The Complete Beginner’s Guide

I’ll let you in on a secret. Did you know you can learn to speak fluent Chinese without ever learning a single Chinese character? It’s all thanks to (hàn yǔ pīn yīn) — Hanyu pinyin, or simply — pinyin. In …

Chinese Idioms: 34 Useful Chengyu to Improve Your Mandarin Fluency

Nothing beats the impact of a Chinese idiom delivered with precision. They say brevity is the soul of wit, after all, and those four-character phrases sure are concise. So while it isn’t strictly necessary to learn idioms as you learn …

Get Early Access to the FluentU App!

We’re happy to announce that development for our smartphone apps are well under way (finally!). Our app will continue to deliver more of what you’ve come to expect from FluentU: learning through the web’s best real-world content but …