allons-y!

(6/20 - for more check here) This post is written from my perspective - how I would recommend starting to read in Chinese. Of course, it’s totally up to you and your preferences. I mainly created it because I’ve been asked quite a lot before about how I started reading in Chinese, what my reading journey has been like, and where to even begin.

This guide is aimed mostly at Chinese learners, but I think it could also be pretty useful for people learning other Asian languages, especially if you haven’t had much contact with Asian languages before.

Everything here is based on my own experiences, feelings, and preferences. I’ve been learning Chinese for over 6 years now, and I’ve recently returned to studying Japanese too - and I actually follow my own “advice” (right now I’m reading tons of Japanese graded readers myself).

chase your interest the way you would have if you were 5-15. If you like a show, a song, a movie, you replay it over and over, you put it on in the background because you want to, you replay a short chunk over and over, you make that MV you want to, you memorize the lines that are your favorite. You get obsessed with a novel or show? You find the chapters/scenes/lines that aren't translated yet and try to translate them yourself. Or you get so obsessed you start translating yourself because you want to compare your own translation to ones you've found. You start grinding social media in the language you're learning, for even MORE posts about the thing you are obsessed with.

ひかく

comparison

この論文では、ドイツとオランダの民間伝承を比較する。 この ろんぶん では、ドイツ と オランダ の みんかん でんしょう を ひかく する。 In this paper, I compare the folklores of Germany and Holland.

ぎんみ

① close examination; careful investigation; close inspection; careful selection; inquiry; enquiry; scrutiny; testing​

② investigation of a crime; inquiry into someone's guilt​Dated term

③ winner (of the most rounds, i.e. a full game)​ (Hanafuda, abbreviation, see also 吟味役)

④ reciting and appreciating traditional poetry (​Archaic, original meaning)

最初に、この実験で使用された触媒について吟味したいです。 さいしょ に、この じっけん で しよう された しょくばい に ついて ぎんみ したい です。 For a start, I would like to examine the catalyzer used in this experiment.

or, “How the transition to horizontal writing went both ways on the sides of cars”

In Japan, some company cars and trucks write the company’s name from the front of the car to the back: left to right on the left side, but from right to left on the right side.

It’s not well documented why people did that, but my personal pet theory is that this started when Japanese was still in the transition from vertical writing (columns right to left) and had to decide between which way to write Japanese horizontally.

Top to bottom, right to left

According to Wikipedia’s article on “horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts”, before WWII, Japanese was written horizontally only in one row when constrained for space, and since columns went from right to left, the one row went from right to left.

Here is an old print ad for Calpico (カルピス) where the logo, being horizontal, reads from right to left, and the ad copy underneath goes from top to bottom, right to left:

This is a lot like writing words top to bottom with upright Latin letters. Here are two signs in Dutch for a liquor store (slijterij), one vertical and the other horizontal.

But especially after WWII when Japan rushed to Westernize, Japan adopted left-to-right horizontal writing to match the Latin alphabet. This follows the footsteps of the January 1915 issue of the Chinese magazine Science, which wrote Chinese horizontally to make various scientific formulae easier to read.

本雜誌印法，旁行上左，並用西文句讀點之，以便插寫算術及物理化學諸程式，非故好新奇，讀者諒之。

This magazine is printed sideways from the top left, and marked with Western punctuation. This is to make more convenient the insertion of mathematical, physical and chemical formulae, and not for novelty's sake. We ask for our readers' understanding.

Coincidentally, this solution was mostly equivalent to rotating vertically written Japanese 90° to the left, then rotating every letter 90° to the right.

Why not both?

The thing is that there was a pretty long time in Japan where left-to-right and right-to-left writing coexisted. So when writing text on vehicles, people wrote the name from the front to the back, so that a stationary observer can read it better when the vehicle is in motion. But it’s weird now that left-to-right won out by a huge margin.

Here are two advertisement plaques for Calpico—I don’t know when the specific dates are—that have motly the same design, but the older one (using the kyūjitai 戀) goes from right to left, and the newer one (using the shinjitai 恋) goes from left to right. (I don’t know why the character in the ad looks so blackface-y, but it’s what it is...)

This post was prompted by this Quora question, which listed some times when this practice went sideways (pun definitely intended). Translation follows.

Q: Why are company names, like on the side of a truck, written from right to left?

Answer by Kōji Hirano • president of idealShip, Inc. (2006–now) • 1215 answers written, seen 130.87 million times

There are various hypotheses, but the prevailing one is that it’s in imitation of ships writing letters from the front to the back to make it clearer which side it’s facing. Though, I don’t think a truck needs to imitate that, being obvious which end is the front end of one...

Also, I’ve directly heard before that many companies do it as a good luck charm to keep the company moving forward. They seem to associate going against the direction of movement with things going badly, and want to avoid that.

I often hear the hypothesis that it’s easier for a moving car to read it when the text goes from the front to the back, but I don’t trust that...

You see this↑ brand often! It’s Sujahta. [Note: written “スジャータ”, a dairy product company, and the #1 brand of coffee creamer and chilled soup in Japan as of 2009]

Writing backwards causes these kinds of... mishaps...

Not 送輸—トイレ : [portTrans — Toilet]... but レイトー輸送 [Reitō Transport]

Not わかいあの肉 [That Young Meat]... but 肉のあいかわ [Aikawa Meats].

Not 所業エロ山 [Actions Lewd Mountain]... but 山口工業所 [Yamaguchi Industrial Works]

Not クッサア [EW, IT REEKS!]... but アサック [Asack]

せいめい

① life; existence​

② (one's) working life; career​

③ life force; lifeblood; soul; essence (occasionally read as いのち)

水は生命にとって不可欠である。 みず は せいめい に とって ふかけつ で ある。 Water is essential to life.

AI videos are labelled on Douyin, but I still haven't made a habit of checking the label immediately, so I usually only see the label after I've already noticed an AI quality to the video, although I've been tricked before (I think it was a parrot video). My point of reference for AI videos is those Youtube ads for AI vertical short dramas, though, so I'm not all that great at spotting them.

AI is viewed much more positively in China (84% of Chinese respondents agreed with "Products and services using artificial intelligence make me excited" in 2025), and in some polls, China views AI the most positively/least negatively out of all countries polled. Compare this to the West, where 30-40% of Europe and the anglosphere view AI positively. This could be partly because physical labour is still a large portion of China's workforce, or that Doubao (China's most popular AI assistant) is kinda dumb (from what I've heard), so it's less of a threat, but that's speculation. I don't live in China, so I can't say how it is IRL, but that number is definitely reflected on Douyin.

For instance, people candidly talk about their use of Doubao for anything and everything, and often use it to generate images to post in Douyin comments. People commenting under AI videos also pretty much only do so to express shock at the capabilities of AI, and I see pretty much no pushback on the actual use of AI. AI does get brought up a lot under non-AI videos, though, mostly "I can't believe it's not AI!" and the like. One comment I see a lot under process videos is: "In a time when AI is popular, there are still older generations that persevere in making things by hand."

Whenever I do see people concerned about AI, their concerns are pretty much limited to employment, the uncanniness of AI-generated content, and that the ease of generating AI content squeezes out real creators. On the other hand, comments under the video linked above talk about how OP is a talented director (prompting the AI), that the common people creating short films about social issues like this is what AI should be used for, and that "this is what high quality looks like".

つうしょう

common name; popular name; nickname; name commonly used

この会社は通称「JR」と呼ばれています。 この かいしゃ は つうしょう 「JR」 と よばれています。 This company is commonly known as "JR."

At this point I’m upper intermediate, so I know most of the essential skills that carry over between different settings. Basic grammar, function words, listening fundamentals.

Some vocabulary words for the rainy season in Japan.

梅雨　つゆ　rainy season

梅雨入り　つゆいり　the beginning of the rainy season

梅雨明け　つゆあけ　the end of the rainy season

長雨　ながあめ　prolonged rain; continuous rainfall

小雨　こさめ　light rain; drizzle

土砂降り　どしゃぶり　torrential rain; downpour

豪雨　ごうう　heavy rain; torrential rainfall

湿気　しっけ　humidity; moisture in the air

蒸し暑い　むしあつい　hot and humid; muggy

曇り空　くもりぞら　cloudy sky

水たまり　みずたまり　puddle

雨具　あまぐ　rain gear (umbrella, raincoat, etc.)

五月雨　さみだれ　early summer rain; an old poetic word for the rainy season

入梅　にゅうばい　the beginning of the rainy season (formal/meteorological term)

空梅雨　からつゆ　a dry rainy season with little rainfall

梅雨前線　ばいうぜんせん　Baiu front; seasonal rain front

雨宿り　あまやどり　taking shelter from the rain

じめじめする　to be damp and humid

しとしと降る　しとしとふる　to rain softly and steadily

you can find things like: * this map of chang'an when it was the capital of the tang dynasty

or * this reference on the various measurements and units, their conversions to more widely known western units, and their regional/dynastic variations or * this list of sayings related to marriage

じかいよこく

next episode preview; preview for the next installment

アニメの最後に次回予告が流れました。 アニメ の さいご に じかいよこく が ながれました。 A preview of the next episode played at the end of the anime.

I combine the grammar and kanji I'm learning to write short stories. Like this:

Let's say I've got 5 kanji I'm learning, and 3 grammar points.

I look up vocab words for those 5 kanji and choose one word I especially want to learn for each. I make a lil' list of the new-to-me words.

Btw: You don't choose the words based on a predetermined story. You pick the words you want to learn and then decide how to make a story out of them.

Using the vocab and grammar points as creative restraints, I make myself (hand)write a 5-sentence short story, each sentence containing one of the vocab words. Occasionally I'll write a few more sentences to ensure the story has a beginning, middle, and end.

I'm not gonna share my stories because I'm sure they suck, but it's honestly been a lot of fun. I've written about pirates and witches, gods and a lawyer who got turned into a rabbit.

あかぬけ

refinement; style; sophistication

この絵は垢抜けした書き方。 この え は あかぬけ した かきかた。 This picture is done in a sophisticated style.