One Chinese Story a Day

I've been learning Mandarin Chinese since September 2024.

Before then, I had already fallen down the rabbit hole of Chinese media.

First came 动画 (Chinese animé). I still remember watching 斗罗大陆 (Soul Land) and becoming completely obsessed. To be fair, I am exactly the target audience. Give me an overpowered main character who is secretly ridiculously strong while everyone around them thinks they're weak, and I am immediately seated. I don't know what this says about me, but it has been true for as long as I can remember.

What followed naturally was C-dramas, especially 玄幻 — Chinese fantasy full of cultivation, supernatural powers, and absurdly large worlds.

I loved how different everything felt from my own reality. The colours seemed richer, the costumes were gorgeous, and the worlds felt vast and magical. I loved the way the actors and actresses moved, the subtle expressions, and eventually the language itself. There is something about hearing Chinese poetry read aloud that sounds beautiful to me, even when I don't understand a fraction of what is being said.

Then came web novels.

This is where I encountered a whole host of ideas that were completely new to me: reincarnation, the Chinese conception of hell, system novels, different philosophies, and different ways of looking at the world. Some of it was strange, some of it was beautiful, and a lot of it was fascinating.

Around the same time, I also fell in love with Chinese music and OSTs. I love the haunting sound of the 二胡 (èrhú) and the quiet, almost meditative sound of the 古琴 (gǔqín). Even before I knew what either instrument was called, I found myself repeatedly listening to pieces that featured them. There is something about those sounds that I find incredibly moving.

Then there are singers like 周深 (Zhou Shen).

At some point I had to admit that this was becoming a pattern.

Looking back, it was pretty obvious where all of this was headed.

There was no universe in which I consumed this much Chinese media and didn't eventually end up trying to learn the language.

And so here we are.

People sometimes ask me why I want to learn Chinese. Usually I give them a "sensible" answer about wanting to watch dramas without subtitles or read web novels that haven't been translated yet.

I don't actually think that's the reason.

The truth is that I just enjoy it.

I enjoy my classes. I enjoy learning new words. I enjoy slowly uncovering how the language works. I've told my teacher many times—who would probably like me to be much further along than I currently am—that I don't really have some grand objective.

I am doing this because I like it.

No pressure.

That being said, I've been feeling a growing frustration recently.

My teacher places me around HSK 3. I know a lot of words. I can recognise a decent number of characters. If someone uses vocabulary I know and speaks slowly enough, I can often follow along.

But most of my Chinese feels passive.

I spend a lot of time recognising things, understanding things, and learning new vocabulary, but very little time actually producing the language myself. I can manage basic S-V-O sentences, but the moment I want to express something slightly more complicated, I often find myself staring into space trying to figure out how to put the pieces together.

Knowing what I want to say and being able to say it are often two very different things.

I also can't write by hand.

That particular problem can wait for future me lol.

This project is my attempt to push through that barrier.

The idea is simple. I use AI to generate a random topic and a handful of new vocabulary words, and then I write a short story using them. Afterwards I review it, correct mistakes, write a more natural version, and add notes about anything interesting I learned along the way.

The goal is one story a day.

Will it actually be one story every single day?

Honestly, probably not.

By the time I finish writing, reviewing, correcting, and studying everything, a surprising amount of time has disappeared. But hopefully it will be consistent enough that I'll make meaningful progress.

The stories themselves are often silly, mostly because my vocabulary and grammar are still limited. There is only so much literary brilliance one can achieve when working with beginner Mandarin.

But that isn't really the point.

The point is to get comfortable producing the language. To make mistakes. To notice patterns.

Mostly, though, I'm excited to have a record.

I can't wait to compare Day 1 with Day 180.

Surely I will have improved by then.

Non?