Listener special: Our Chinese learning journeys & China stories 听众特辑：外国人眼里的中国｜Takeaway Chinese

Takeaway Chinese, where you can take some Chinese away and experience progress day by day.

Takeaway Chinese, we will promise you a difference.

你好,欢迎收听随行汉语。 Welcome to Takeaway Chinese.

I'm Niu Honglin with Steve Hatherly here in the studio.

Hello, Steve.

Hello, once again.

Once again back in the cool studio with the cool questions and answers received from our lovely listeners and Chinese learners.

Friends on Learn Chinese Facebook page and YouTube, and everywhere.

Thank you for joining the show in this way.

We knew we had to do a second episode because number one you had so many answers to our questions, really good answers.

But number two, we just didn't want to waste the opportunity to do another show in this studio.

So thank you.

Thank you for providing us with the opportunity.

In the previous episode we talked about relatively basic questions like why did you start learning Chinese and also what was the first words?

These are really fun questions as well.

But well, I think these are the questions that everyone would have an answer.

Yeah, of course.

Everybody could have a different answer too.

Yes.

And another question that everyone could have an answer about is can be a little bit different is which Chinese word confused you the most at the beginning?

What was your answer?

Well, this question was harder for me to answer.

Because you're just so smart and nothing confuses you?

Everything confuses me.

I think that's why I couldn't find an answer because everything was confusing.

I think the questions about like, why did you start learning Chinese?

What were the first words?

Those were easier for me.

Then, what was the confusing part of the confusing things, or the confusing words or grammar structures or what have you is because, very quickly, I was able to recognize that when you're learning Chinese, you can't apply rules from English or from Korean or from French or from any other language.

And what I mean by that is sometimes, when you're learning a second language or a third language, you'll take the rules that were applied to your native tongue or the second language that you learned and you try to apply it to the new language.

It doesn't work.

It never works.

Then nothing makes sense.

Right.

You have some habits that you'll try to apply, but it doesn't translate.

It doesn't transfer.

So that's a good language learning tip, I think.

Just try to remember that when you're learning Chinese, you're learning the rules of Chinese and they apply to the rules of Chinese.

And I think that's really helped me avoid finding things to be overly confusing.

Yes, because if most of the times, the things that confuses you well, there are different scenarios, for sure.

There's the scenario that you didn't get the perfectly correct or suitable answer.

Explanation for you.

But another reason could be that there's no answer.

You were trying to find out a rule, but it turns out the thing that confuses you was an exception.

And that, like you said, it's not only in Chinese learning.

It's in every second language or third language learning.

When I was learning English, one thing that my teacher always say is 语感.

语感.

语 is 语言.

语言 is language.

We know about that.

And 感 is 感觉.

感觉 is a feeling.

So sometimes when it comes to language, it's a feeling.

When you hear the sentence or when you hear that language often enough, a feeling would grow on you and you kind of feel like oh, that sounds natural in that language.

Oh, that sounds a little bit weird.

You cannot finger point what goes wrong, but it sounds wrong and you will not choose that answer.

And that feeling is 語感, and that feeling comes from continue listening to it and watching Chinese drama and listening to Chinese songs and having Chinese friends and using it often enough.

I think I've just come up with an answer.

When you start learning Chinese, one of the first things actually it might be lesson number one is about the tones.

People talk about the tones.

Your Chinese language teacher will talk about the tones.

And when you hear the audio and you practice the tones, they are very much... Similar?

Not similar.

Difficult to recognize?

Yes.

Or differentiate?

Not difficult to recognize.

I'm sorry, making you guess the answer to my point.

What I'm trying to say is that they're emphasized.

And I remember I asked you on an episode of Takeaway Chinese because what I was hearing from like audio textbooks or YouTube videos that I was watching.

The tones were very much emphasized.

But in real life, when I hear it being spoken, when I hear Chinese being spoken by regular speakers.

I asked you.

You the tones don't seem to be as emphasized as they are in the textbooks.

Right?

Am I wrong?

And you said no.

They're flowing in the sentences.

Yeah, you said right.

In spoken language, it's not as emphasized.

Yes, but you get used to it after listening to... enough Chinese sentences.

And don't get frustrated because of it, because we do have answers here related to tones.

We have answers saying from Devi saying ma with different tones.

So ma, ma, ma, ma, that's the four tones.

Ma means mommy.

Ma can be... Horse?

No, ma is horse.

Ma can be related to different types of material and specific type in fabric.

And the ma can be cursing or using, you know, bad languages.

And what I was trying to say is that don't get frustrated, because When kids started to learn Chinese, they got confused with tones as well.

That's why we have different tongue twisters to try to help kids separate or differentiate different tones.

Do you know one?

I do, I do.

I was just trying to say this one because for 马, for example, there's one saying 妈妈骑马, 马慢, 妈妈骂慢马.

So, 妈妈 is 妈咪.

骑马 is riding on a horse.

马慢, the horse is slow.

妈妈, 妈妈, 妈咪 is cursing the slow, slow horse.

So, see, it does have a meaning, even though it does not make that much of a sense.

刘 is trying to teach kids about the four tones.

I think another one for me, and it wasn't confusing.

It was just you have to get used to it.

And Chinese is a musical language because of the tones.

But me being a native English speaker.

And yes, of course, every language has its kind of ups and downs and ups and downs.

And you can denote or you can relate your emotion through that.

But.

It's hard to convince your brain that those tones are not just, oh, kind of important.

It's very important.

They're essential that you get them right.

Otherwise, you could be saying something completely different.

And I think that's one of the real challenges of the tones is getting used to the importance of them.

And one thing that I don't know if you have already noticed, is that yes, Chinese characters have tones.

But at the same time our sentences also have different tones, in the sense that different tones or different context would signal different emotion as well.

So you have to really know the tones of the characters and then understand the tones of the sentences, to understand if this person is praising you or not.

Being sarcastic.

So you're telling us there are tones within the tones.

Yes.

Great.

You'll be fine.

You'll be fine after learning it for a while.

Let's check some of these answers and find out.

Again, the question was, which Chinese word confused you the most in the beginning?

Becky says buy and sell in Chinese.

Why did Becky say that?

Because buy in Chinese is 买.

买. And sell in Chinese is 卖.

卖. So also still tone related.

It's the tones, 买 and 卖. Yeah, so 买 is to buy and 卖 is to sell.

And also we have Chris saying le, or yue kuai, le yin yue, and also xing, which means yes, and yin hang, which means bank.

Oh, by the way, kuai le is happy and yin yue is music, and I think yours is related to what we call do yin zi.

Do yin zi.

So do means many or plural.

Yin is the sound or the voice or hear the pronunciation.

And zi is character.

So duoyin zi would be the character with different pronunciations.

And usually when they have different pronunciations, they have different meanings.

So the character doesn't change.

But the meaning of it, the way of saying it, pronunciations of it changes.

And if you're confused, the clue is what's around the other character.

Yes, the word, the context.

Yes, so that's one.

And also pronouncing 话. I don't know why that one confuses you.

So if you're watching this and you can further explain, please let us know.

And also 做 and 走 pronunciation.

This is a good one.

One of my friends can never tell the difference between 左 and 左 because the pinyin of these two characters are quite close.

So 左 would be In English letters, Z-U-O, whereas 走 would be Z-O-U.

So again, remember, those are pinyin, not English letters.

Yeah.

That might help.

Another challenge for me with my English-speaking brain is the pronunciation, like the T-Z sound.

That 字.

That's a challenge because we don't really have that one in English, not commonly used anyway.

Yeah, so in every Chinese or in every language learning, you would encounter something that you find a bit difficult, too far away.

For example, in English you have the TH sound, which would require you to bite your tongue a little bit.

In Chinese, we don't have that.

And that is something completely new to us.

So consider this something new completely to you.

Payback time.

And of course there are a lot of challenges and some Oh.

One thing that I'm very proud of is that we are able to explain almost all of the confusing points that our lovely friend sent us, which means sometimes it's not that confusing.

It's just it takes a bit more time to master.

It takes a bit more explanation.

And as long as you learn that language long enough, you can conquer each and every challenge case by case.

Once it's two years or five years, you realize that you can solve almost all the problems you encounter in year two or yeah yeah.

Well, and that's the thing is that in the beginning you will have your difficulties and then you'll move on to the next stage And you forgot the previous difficulty but meet new ones.

That's why you forgot the previous difficulties because you met new ones.

Yeah, it just keeps coming and coming.

But that's, you know, that's part of every language learning process.

And the reason that people are able to and people would continue to have the drive, the motivation to do so, is because there are always some treats left.

In the learning journey, you understand a cool drama or one sentence that is supposed to be the punchline in the plot that you never could understand.

And all of a sudden, because you understand the language better, you would understand that line, or you're making a new friend that are able to use that language and communicate, be with or talk to you using their language, and you find the fact that being able to communicate with them in their own culture, in their own language, something so cool and much deeper.

That could be another reason.

Yeah, I mean, having someone to practice with is a huge advantage, obviously that's the role that we try to play with our audience is to be that someone for you, so that when you encounter your difficulties, then we can try to answer those questions for you.

Oh, you make me want the answer of our next question do you have a chinese friend and share your story to be yes, we do have chinese friends and that's nioh nioh, and i would love that answer.

But Before going into that answer, let's see what are some other, you know, answers that we received.

Sure.

My Abba says well, I have a few and they are all always so polite and helpful and kind and they have really helped me navigate life in China.

I'm grateful for them.

That's the thing.

I don't know if it's a Chinese thing or if, well, probably it's universal.

When we, as Chinese, know that you're trying to learn our language, we would go out of our way to help, because we really appreciate the effort.

Yeah.

In my experiences.

It happens in a lot of places around the world, but it definitely happens here in China too.

I have been lost on more than one occasion... in this city.

No, it's part of the fun of traveling for me.

That doesn't stress me out at all.

Oh, good.

That's good.

If I get lost walking around.

And part of the reason for that is because Beijing and China are super, super, super safe.

You have nothing to worry about.

But yeah, getting lost is something that I've gone through quite a bit.

And when I moved here I almost feel guilty about it now because I felt like well, maybe people won't speak English or maybe people won't be willing to help me too much because, not because you know, people are Chinese, because Beijing's a big city, right?

And big city culture can sometimes be a little bit cold, right?

Around the world.

I've asked on numerous occasions for directions and I've been helped by Every single time.

Happily, by the way.

People are always curious about where I'm from and what's going on and why I'm lost, and you know things like that.

In China, we say 热情好客. yes is like warm-hearted or passionate about things and is hospitality and the thing is that yes we are very very warm-hearted but chinese people would even compete about who are the most hospital kind of people in which province, which part of the country.

For example, people in Dongbei, that the northeast part, northeast three provinces.

They are very, very warm-hearted and they would welcome you and they would even change their city decorations and adapt to their traditional food to cater to the needs of the travelers, no matter if it's expats or travelers from other parts of the country.

And they're very, very kind.

And they would treat you with really huge share of food.

And the people in Shandong province, they call themselves Hao Ke, Shandong.

So we are the people that we like guests.

So Hao Ke kind of carries the meaning of enjoying or liking or welcoming guests.

So we are a province that welcome guests.

So, yeah, that's how warm hearted Chinese people can sometimes be.

I love it.

Let's check another answer here.

Do you have Chinese friends?

Ooh, this one's romantic.

Oh.

Attila says, I have one.

It's a romantic story.

We met in 2016 in Budapest.

We went for one year in the same building to school and we have almost the same age, only a few days difference.

I liked her and wrote her a romantic message, and that was just the beginning.

Oh.

We have known each other almost 10 years and we are still in contact.

She went back to China.

I live in Serbia, but I promised her I'll meet her again, but this time in China.

And I hope it'll happen in 2026 for the 10th anniversary of the friendship.

She is the cutest, most polite and kind person I ever met.

I don't think it's necessarily 100% romantic.

It can also be a kind of friendship.

But yes, I think it's the encounter you can have in life.

I feel like Attila hoping it's going to be romantic.

But we'll see.

Attila, give us an update on that story if you do visit in 2026.

And Patrick is saying that I have a Chinese friend by the name of Cloud, Yun.

Yes, that is Chinese way of saying cloud.

And he works with the Chinese embassy and as an interpreter, which means we can communicate quite well already.

He's a very good guy.

And I love it when the Chinese person is able to speak the language of Chinese. um the local language that can perfectly communicate still as you patrick you're you have a passionate about learning chinese because you want to you know be even closer with your friend yeah i like it and that seems to be the the continuing theme in all of the messages yes that we got.

And everybody's saying, yes, I have a friend from China.

They are so generous and so loving and so giving and so sharing.

I mean, it's just message after message after message after message.

And finally, I've got the answer I was looking for.

I have a Chinese friend and her name is Niu Niu.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I would love to be a friend of all of you.

Hold on.

You didn't read that correctly.

This message says, I have a Chinese colleague And her name is Niu Niu.

Thank you.

We should have that one up on the big screen.

Oh, come on.

I think that's the thing.

When you have or form a special bond with a culture, with someone in that culture, with someone who's continued to trying to give you help, even only online, that feeling is special, isn't it?

Can I give you a compliment?

Oh.

Hmm.

I think one of the things that makes Takeaway Chinese popular and you could maybe send a message, if you agree with me is that Chinese can be a very intimidating thing for people who don't have experience with it or had the opportunity to learn it.

The entry point is confusing because a lot of times for a language, the entry point will be reading.

Right.

But that's one of the harder things you'll learn how to do with Chinese language.

So with that difficult entry point, it can be confusing as to know where to start.

And what you do with Takeaway Chinese and what you've done for a long time for the audience is you make it a really nice, simple entry point and you communicate and answer questions and tell funny, cute stories and I would say I'll speak on behalf of your audience and say you are definitely a friend of theirs.

Thank you.

And for those of you who have do still have many questions, and I do believe there's no silly questions.

Every question is legitimate.

And if there's anything that we can do to make your learning journey easier, we would love to do, no matter if it's a simple question about Chinese or some learning tip you're looking for.

Please leave us a comment and continue communicating with us.

We would be very, very much happy to be able to help you.

And if you have a question for me about what it's like to live here as an expat, I'd be happy to answer those questions too.

Yes, yes.

And related to something about living in China or traveling to China.

We also asked what's a nice memory you had in China recently?

And I am almost surprised that we've got so, so many answers under that question as well.

So many people have the experience of working here, of traveling here, of being here.

So many answers.

I like this one.

No need to bring cash even if you buy food in the market.

Very convenient, yes.

And this one from elaine saying chengdu panda base.

Of course, everybody love love, loves panda.

Yeah, one of my memories is from last week, as a matter of fact, so that's really recent, so touching.

I was so touched, so this is just like a customer service thing.

I went to a restaurant and when i went to the restaurant it wasn't raining, and During the meal it started to rain.

And I thought, oh, no, you know, going to have to walk home in the rain.

As I was getting ready to leave, the service staff came and, here, umbrella.

And I thought, oh, that's very sweet.

Is that just for me?

Maybe, maybe not.

But I saw a couple of other people where they were like, oh, here, take an umbrella.

That's one thing.

Here's another thing.

I was on the subway one day.

And same story.

Started to rain when I was on the subway.

So when I came out, the subway station staff, you know those cheap pardon me, those cheap kind of blue raincoats that you can buy.

Well, the subway staff were handing those out to people for free as they were leaving the subway station, so they wouldn't get wet.

I mean...

People just really try to take care of each other here.

Yes, and that is why we have many answers related to the people.

They're so helpful.

That's from John.

The Great Wall of China.

That's related to the traveling experience and also visited the Terracotta Army near Xi'an, in Xi'an.

Well, yes, near Xi'an in Shanxi Province, for sure, related to traveling.

And Nick's saying good food in Guangdong.

I love food in Guangdong as well.

Yue Cai, that's one of my favorite kind of cuisines here in China.

And yes, there are more than one type of cuisine in China.

If you're traveling here, you can enjoy many many, many more types.

Yeah, and so much to see and so much to do.

That's from carl, and we've got all these answers related to traveling experience, people and environment convenience.

Well, we had, i don't know, can we bring some of those messages back up on our screen because um, some of you sent messages along with your pictures like look carl hi carl um, carl pilgrim says naning, So much to see and do there.

And Carl, you sent a picture of yourself while you were traveling there.

Thanks for that.

That's very authentic.

Yeah.

Biggie Khan, who's just behind me there.

Kunming.

Always have a special place in my heart.

Two weeks back, I was there.

Also climbed the Great Wall of China up to the 10th Fortress.

Why?

What's the, what's the 10th fortress?

You see, see what I said?

Like when you ask questions, sometimes we don't know.

I'm guessing Biggie Khan that the 10th fortress is pretty far up the wall.

Yeah.

It might be a milestone point.

Yeah.

But the thing is, no matter where do you start learning Chinese?

Why do that?

What was your first word, or whether or not you have a Chinese friend.

What's your favorite Chinese sea drama?

Chinese sun.

And, uh, Have you ever been to China?

Any fun experience to share?

No matter what your answers are, it all goes back to the fact that you're interested in the culture, and something about China interests you as well.

And that is the reason that has been continued pushing us to do Takeaway Chinese to these kind of shows as well.

That is, we know there is that need and we want to to be the ambassador of cultures, if we put it in a very high place.

But also we want to be your friends, your online friends who are sharing the same hobby with you.

And that is also why doing these kind of special shows, the kind of shows that allow us to communicate with you, to probably help you share your view about Chinese culture, Chinese language learning with other fellow Chinese learners much much, much more fun.

Well said.

And thank you so much for being with us all this time.

And we'll see you next time.

And if you have anything, please leave the comment in the comment area.

I'm Niu Niu with Steve.

Thank you so much.

Bye bye, everybody.

Bye bye.

[隨行漢語：語言學習的困惑、文化連結與中國體驗]-[Listener special: Our Chinese learning journeys & China stories 听众特辑：外国人眼里的中国]

📋 Summary

語言學習中的困惑與「語感」的建立

文化橋樑：人際連結與熱情好客

探索中國：便捷生活與旅途回憶

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[隨行漢語：語言學習的困惑、文化連結與中國體驗]-[Listener special: Our Chinese learning journeys & China stories 听众特辑：外国人眼里的中国]

📋 Summary

語言學習中的困惑與「語感」的建立

文化橋樑：人際連結與熱情好客

探索中國：便捷生活與旅途回憶

用 ListenLeap 深度學習

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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