Learn Chinese from social media

with Mandarin Melon

If you're scrolling, why not learn Chinese?

Mandarin Melon finds real Chinese social media posts that are tailored to your level of Chinese so you can learn while you scroll.

If you want to dive straight into reading Chinese social media posts, try one of these. Or scroll down to learn more.

Comprehensible Social Media

Social media can be really fun and engaging, so it makes sense to use it for language learning. If you're going to be scrolling, why not use that time to learn Chinese?

But if you've tried creating an accounts on Chinese social media sites for practice, you've probably found there are pros and cons.

Social media is great for comprehensible input because posts are:

  • Written by native speakers
  • Use real-life vocab & grammar
  • Give bite-sized bursts of learning

But it can be challenging for new or even intermediate learners because:

  • Native speakers use a lot of hard words
  • Finding users to follow can be difficult
  • Social media sites are tailored for posting, not learning

Mandarin Melon provides two new learning experiences powered by social media posts. Both:

  • Show you real social media posts
  • Adjust content based on your level
  • Help you pick up new words and characters

Experience 1
Vocab Tailored Feeds

If you just finished HSK 2, wouldn't it be great to read posts that only use characters from HSK 2? Or if you've spent a few months with Hanly, only characters from its first 30 levels?

Tailored Feeds is exactly that. A social media feed that uses only the characters you already know.

So far we support vocab lists from the following sources. And more are coming soon.

You can even have the app allow posts with a number of new characters to widen the range of posts you can read and broaden your vocabulary.

Experience 2
Learn Chinese from scratch, taught by Netizens

This experimental tool tries to answer the question: Can you learn Chinese just from reading social media posts? Even if you start not knowing a single character?

In this experiment you will learn one character at a time, each selected to maximize the number of social media posts you can read.

With each new character you learn, all the posts you see include that new character to help you practice reading it. And, we never include any posts using characters you haven't learned yet.

Each new character you learn in this experiment unlocks hundreds of new posts and builds on characters you've already learned, exposing new meanings and usages.

Is this the best way to learn Chinese? Probably not! But it is fun!

In addition to the one-by-one character approach described above, we have a couple different character orders that use a similar concept but present characters in different orders.

Why "Mandarin Melon"?

In Chinese the phrase "吃瓜" (chīguā), literally "eat melon," means to watch a spectacle without getting involved, a bit like the english phrase "peanut gallery." It comes from Chinese people eating melons while gossiping and watching crowds go by. It can also be used to describe watching juicy gossip unfold on social media.

Mandarin Melon aims to give the 吃瓜 experience to Chinese learners by making Chinese social media approachable and helping you improve your Chinese along the way. 一边吃瓜一边学中文.

Also, melons are delicious 🍉.

Want More?

I'm working on a number of projects to help you learn Chinese (or learn other things). If you liked this project, join my mailing list. I promise to only ever send an email if there's something actually cool to share. No spam.

Or feel free to send me an email if you have thoughts or feedback.

My email is: erik@mandarin-melon.com.