Is corporate always the only alternative? I’ve been working in the public and non-profit sector, even in IT, and it’s always been much chiller than “corporate”. Maybe small companies are better too. Though I’d like to avoid working at all if possible, which made my returns to the working force always a bit meh anyway.

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🙏 Absolutely

Yeah HelloChinese I’ve heard is great though I haven’t used it. I’d recommend you to try Pleco’s graded readers which you can buy in their store. DuChinese is another great option for graded readers (paid subscription) which has helped me a lot.

A more unorthodox suggestion is John DeFrancis’ “Chinese Reader”-series from the 60s and 70s starting with “Beginning Chinese Reader”. Those books, written in traditional Mandarin (but with simplified versions in the appendix) will start you from zero and teach you the most common 1200 characters and 8000+ words. He uses a spaced repetition scheme so every character is repeated in a calculated manner, like 10 times the first lesson it’s introduced, 5 times the next etc… They’re really amazing and available on the web if you search for it, or you can also buy them as they’ve been reprinted. I’ve been going through it steadily and even though I knew a lot of the characters already when I started reading, it has increased my reading speed and comprehension of what I’m reading drastically. It’s just so packed with good reading material, even though it’s a bit dated. It’s really hard to find that much graded reading material that progressively increases your skills.

For listening, I’d recommend podcasts like MaomiChinese, Talk Taiwanese Mandarin, TeaTime Chinese and Chinese Podcast with Shenglan. Hope this helps!

Absolutely, I try to avoid having any “zero-day”. There are days where I study a lot less, but it’s never zero. At least I’ll do my Anki cards. 加油 to you too!

Yeah definitely fair enough, I get you. I don’t really care about stressing or putting in the hours for a boss or someone else’s sake, but when it comes to my own personal interests and what I’m doing for myself, I think I tend to pressure myself a bit more.

I’ve already studied Chinese full-time in a Chinese environment actually, and I’m preparing to do so soon again (which is one of the reasons why I’m extra locked in atm, just so I’m fully prepared). But yeah I try to mix it up with language exchanges and so forth where I am atm anyway :)

Haha my “guilt” isn’t that overwhelming but it’s in the back of mind. It doesn’t really affect my studying or my day-to-day. I still enjoy the studying. But in terms of language acquisition, I do get rewarded by getting better at a language in a shorter amount of time. Which would be awesome. Even though I realize it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

My job doesn’t require my full focus. As said, I have a lot of downtime on my job too.

Work full-time. But I do have a lot of downtime at work.

Hmm I don’t see it as a chore or something I detest tbh. I just try to be disciplined and want to make somewhat fair progress in a good amount of time.

No, I dislike the small rumblings too even if the fans aren’t spinning that much, thanks though!

I use suspend on my desktop every night at bed time. Running Pop. Could never be one of those with a 24/7 on desktop, too much noise.

Unfortunately it’s still trial and error. Check out e.g Ovpn, Astrill, Mullvad though. You can always email and ask different providers as well. Though it’s best it you set it up before visiting China. A HK sim through Airalo or similar also works.

Yeah, I’ve heard Shanghai for example has zones where the GFW is much more lax?

It’s better to pay for a VPN provider that is verified to work in China. And no, they won’t kidnap you for using a VPN as some people write here. It’s a non-issue just to bypass the GFW. The issue is when you write to a Chinese audience things that the CCP do not like.

You don’t have to set up your own VPN. Many public providers work.

It’s crazy that this is an opinion that people really have. I don’t like authoritarian states and I have a lot of issues with the CCP, but this isn’t true at all. Loads of native Chinese living in China uses a VPN. They don’t care about it.

They have. I don’t know what people are talking about in this post. It’s bypassable easily, and the CCP won’t kill you for it. There are so many Chinese using aVPN themselves to bypass GFW