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Buying Chinese Books from JD.com

June 10, 2021

Are you interested in increasing the amount of Chinese input you get through reading practice? If you’ve read our other posts about the Input Hypothesis, you know that language input through extensive reading is the most effective way to increase your language proficiency. I try to use apps and Chrome extensions on my phone and computer to help aid my language learning (Zhongwen Chrome extension, etc). However, I really enjoy having a few physical books to read when I want a break for my eyes or if I want to relax by the pool and read. So how can you find a good Chinese book to read? Let’s talk about purchasing books from JD.com.

You may be thinking, “if I want a book, I just go to Amazon.” I’ve used Amazon several times to purchase Chinese language books and it does have a decent selection. Check out our post about how to find Chinese language books on Amazon. However, I recently noticed that Amazon books from China are much more expensive than when ordering directly from China.

For example, I wanted to purchase a Chinese cocktail book on Amazon that cost $35.90.

Then I checked JD and found the same book for 44 元 or $6.71! That’s 18% of the price!

Now we should note that the shipping costs will definitely increase this, but I was able to purchase 2 books including shipping for the price of one on Amazon.

JD.com is an e-commerce giant in China on a similar scale to Amazon. The difference is, by purchasing directly from a Chinese website, the selection of books is unparalleled. Why is this so important? Because one of the most important factors for successful language learning through comprehensible input is that you are genuinely very interested in the content you are reading.

How to Ship Abroad from JD.com

Ordering from JD was a bit tricky for me to figure out the first time around, so I want to share with you what I’ve learned so you won’t have the same struggles I did. The tricky thing about buying on JD.com is that you have to select overseas (海外) for your location in multiple locations and it is easy to miss. I’m not sure if any of these are unnecessary to select, but the most important is that when go to add your shipping address, you will have to find 海外 in the bottom right corner of the popup in order to enter an international address. It’s definitely easy to miss amongst all the other options. 

On the primary homepage and throughout the website, you will see a dropdown in the top left corner for location, as shown here:

Then you will see another location to select this in your shopping cart:

And most importantly, you will have to select 海外 here during the check out process in order to enter in your address. If you do not have this selected properly, JD will only let you enter a Chinese address.

Shipping:

JD does not provide the level of tracking for their international shipping that you may be used to when ordering from Amazon (and definitely not 2-Day Prime Delivery!). However, my experience was that the shipping was pretty quick. My order shipped within 2 days and arrived 9 days after placing my order. Not bad at all!

I should note that I live on the East coast of the United States, so your shipping costs may vary. However, if you are ordering from the US, you should expect shipping times similar to or less than mine, as my location is about as far from China as you can get in the US.

If you’re interested in getting started reading real Chinese content, I hope you take advantage of JD.com to find something that truly interests you!

Ways to Jumpstart Your Chinese Number Listening Skills

May 10, 2021

If you’re like me, developing solid listening skills is one of the most challenging parts of learning Chinese. I have multiple other posts and videos dedicated to practicing your listening skills by watching videos on YouTube (posts here and here), but today I want to talk about something new.

The interesting thing about listening skills is that sometimes its okay to accept just catching the gist of what the speaker is saying, particularly if you’re watching a TV show, lecturer, etc. However, if you’ve ever experienced being in China and needing to ask a local for help, you know that it can be crucial in those situations to understand every word the other person is saying.

As always, I like to narrow down my studying to the minimum effective dose or the least amount of studying and practice required to get to a sufficient skill level. For this reason, I think that drilling your listening on high frequency content is the best solution for rapid success. So for this exercise, I decided I would start off small by working exclusively with listening to numbers in Chinese.

Numbers come up often in spoken language, particularly as the answers to questions you would likely ask. How much does this cost? How many are included? What is your phone number? Etc. So I went scouring the internet for the best ready made tools to solve this problem and here is what I came up with:

  • “Nums – Learn Numbers” – iPhone App – $2.99

This app is very simple, but super cool! It says aloud a random number in Chinese (or in many other languages of your choice) and you type in the number on the keypad to check if you heard it correctly. I like practicing to shorten my hesitation time on any numbers that tend to trip me up when I hear them quickly. You can set the random numbers to ranges starting at 0 going all the way to 9,999.

  • “Mouichido” – iPhone app – Free

This app is very similar to Nums, except no keypad is included. Instead, you quiz yourself like you would with a typical flashcard, answering in your head before clicking to see the answer and checking if you were correct. I much prefer Nums for random numbers because I like the act of typing in the numbers. However, Mouichido has a lot of extra capabilities not available on Nums. First of all, you can set random numbers in a range from 0 all the way to 1,000,000! Not only that, but you can also quiz yourself on times and dates, as shown in the picture. These are multi-select so you can quiz yourself on multiple categories at once. Like Nums, Mouichido also offers various languages other than Mandarin (you can even set it to Cantonese).

Lastly, I’d just like to note that JinbuPal has no affiliation with either of these apps and these recommendations do not benefit us in any way. I really hope you find these tools helpful for practicing your Chinese listening skills. Give them a try and let us know what you think!

Benefits of Changing Your Phone Language to Chinese

March 27, 2021

Have you ever considered practicing your language skills by changing your phone’s system language to Chinese? I had always heard of people using this technique with their phone, computer, GPS, etc but, until recently, I had never tried it out myself. I’ve started using this method to help remind myself to practice my Mandarin daily and it has been really helpful! Today I’d like to share with you some of the benefits and difficulties I have encountered.

Okay, so let’s kick off with some of the benefits.

BENEFITS:

System menus, messages, notifications, buttons

Not surprisingly, tons of system menus and labels change to Chinese which is a great way to learn new terminology and vocabulary. Note that Siri language is managed through a separate setting, so you can still communicate with Siri in English. Here’s some examples of differences in iPhone menus and apps.

Major apps use Chinese

Many apps that you use every day support Chinese and will start sending your push notifications and other information in Chinese. Check out these examples below of using the Chinese language Facebook and Instagram.

I also enjoy a feature of Instagram in which you can tap on post captions for a translation from your native language to Chinese. Check out the comparison below.

Maps and Navigation in Mandarin

You probably guessed this one, but when you change over your language, Google Maps changes entirely to Chinese. This is really cool because it helps you learn the Chinese names of many different cities around the world, as well as have your GPS navigation spoken in Mandarin!

Wikipedia Google Searches Automatically in Mandarin

Here’s a benefit that I never expected. You may be familiar with how when you use the Safari browser on iPhone, often a Google search will provide a brief blurb taken from Wikipedia and a link to the relevant Wikipedia page. With your phone set to Chinese, these will show up in Chinese as well as the article itself when you click through to the Wikipedia page. This is super cool because it reminds you to take some time and read in Chinese everyday. I have found that I often would rather read in Chinese than take the time to change the Wikipedia page back to English (but you can quickly do that, if you like). Check out the examples below.

Mandarin Webpages

In addition to the benefits listed above, some websites support Chinese, especially if the websites are for companies which sell products globally. This is really cool because you don’t always expect which website will support this so it gives a little spontaneity to your day, providing more occasional opportunities to practice your Chinese skills.

THINGS TO WATCH OUT FOR:

Banking and Finance Apps

Many apps determine what language to present content in based on your system settings. This can be really cool because most apps on your phone will suddenly convert to Chinese language. However, there are some functions that can be kind of scary to have change to Chinese if you aren’t 100% confident in your skills. For example, some online banking or stock trading apps may have Chinese language functionality and will change over languages. I personally have noticed Paypal as an example of this. Just be aware that if you are making a large transaction and you aren’t confident you understand, you might want to temporarily change back to your native language to do so.

Navigation Apps

Having your phone in Chinese can be all well and good in normal situations, but when you are stressed out and in a hurry, it can be an extra headache. I have found that Google Maps provided Mandarin language navigation can be frustrating at times, even if you understand perfectly, because it does not provide street names. Instead, Google will tell you to turn left in 500 ft without further explanation. You’ll have to look at your phone for clarification on the map most of the time. This isn’t a game changer, but it can definitely add some difficultly if you’re in heavily traffic in the rain. Be careful and consider changing your language back over to English before setting out on a long journey if you are worried. Remember, changing languages requires a brief system reboot (not to mention navigating through the System menu) so it’s not an immediate process.

Spoken Content

This may be unfamiliar to most users, but I think it’s worth noting. I like to minimize the time and energy I spend reading information on my phone, so I have enabled the Speak Selection setting in the Spoken Content menu. What this does is allow you to have your iPhone read selected text aloud. This is helpful if you want to just select the text of an article or email and listen to it being read to you. For more information on how to set this up on iPhone, you can read about it here. Either way, if you rely on this setting, note that changing the system language to Chinese will have some impact on this. You can still select and read text by clicking 朗读 after selecting text. However, the Asian accent voice sounds a bit more robotic to me at fast speeds. In addition, all numbers and dates within the selected text will be spoken in Chinese if the text you are selecting is in your native language. This isn’t a huge impairment but it is a bit of a distraction.

Great Resources for Mandarin Reading Content

March 28, 2020

When you’re first getting started learning Chinese, it’s very important to start reading as soon as possible. Reading helps you contextualize the language so that you reach your maximum language acquisition potential. If you want to learn more about this method, you can some research further into Stephen Krashen and his “Input Hypothesis.” But in this post, I want to skip over the details on why reading is so important and discuss more about how you can get started with your reading by finding content.

Once you’ve gotten over the initial plateau of reading Chinese characters. It’s important to have go-to resources on hand for content that you are truly interested in so that you can pick out a book or article at any time and start reading on the fly. Dump the textbooks as quickly as possible and get going with some of the following resources:

  • News Sources
  • Print Books – I always think it’s good to have at least one physical print Chinese book around so that you can practice reading even if you’re tired of sitting in front of a computer screen all day. When you are first getting started and not used to navigating Chinese websites, I would highly recommend buying a Chinese version book on Amazon so you don’t have to deal with the complexities of the interface and checkout. For example, my favorite genre is biographies. So to find a book like this (or for any other genre you prefer), perform the following steps: go to Amazon.com, click the menu button in the top left, select “Books & Audible”, select “Hardcover & Paperback”, scroll down and look on the left side for the filter called “Language”, click “See More” and then select “Chinese (Simplified)”, finally scroll back up find the “Department” filter on the left side and select the genre you are most interested in. The most important thing here is to find a book you really want to read because you are interested in the topic.
  • Blogs      
    • Wait But Why. www.waitbutwhy.com/wechat . This one is a little trickier to access because you will to set up a WeChat account first, add Wait But Why to your WeChat account by scanning the QR code, and then access articles by selecting View History and selecting from the Past Articles list.
    • Lei Jun’s (雷军) personal blog（Chinese billionaire tech entrepreneur）http://leijun.blog.techweb.com.cn/
  • Technical Content
    • Zhihu: www.zhihu.com – Similar to Quora.com or StackExchange.com, a forum with questions and answers about a wide variety of topics. You can find the simpliest or most technically advanced of topics on this forum for whatever you might be interested in. Download the app for on-the-go reading. This will require you to set up an account by entering your mobile number.

I would also highly recommend you check out the following post from our Getting Started Series: Pick a Go-To Source of Chinese Reading Material. If you haven’t read through that entire series, you might want to visit it because it is packed with more information to help you along the way.

Using JinbuPal’s Chinese Content Library

June 9, 2019

How would you like to improve your Chinese listening and vocabulary by watching genuine Chinese language videos? There are so many great Chinese films, TV shows, documentaries, and video bloggers to choose from!  

JinbuPal Chinese
Youtube Library
View Library

Regardless of your current skill level, it is always more fun to learn through content that actually aligns with your interests, rather than conversation that feels like it came from a textbook. If what you’re learning isn’t interesting or meaningful to you, it’ll be much harder for it to stick in your memory. For example, I’m an engineer; for this reason, engineering and tech related videos were what I was most interested in watching. Once you find Chinese language videos about the topics you already want to learn about, you can now just use the language as a means to learn about something that is meaningful to you. The more meaningful, the more easily you’ll acquire the language! Makes sense, right? So how can you go about finding what you really enjoy?

I know that when I first started learning Chinese, I found it very difficult to track down the Chinese shows that I really was interested in.  I found in my own experience that finding YouTube channels which teach Chinese is a very simple task; just run a search for Chinese language in YouTube or on Google and you’ll find many channels available (JinbuPal being one of these). However, finding actual Chinese content proves to be a lot more difficult, especially if you’re picky enough to only watch what you’re interested in.

Having experienced this myself, I want to prevent you from having to go through the same challenges! I want to save you time and, most importantly, help you on the path to rapid success as best as I can! So that’s why I’ve compiled a huge list of Chinese content YouTube channels that I’ve found by personally mining through YouTube. I’ve even categorized all of these channels based on common topics and subtitle availability. This way, you can easily filter by category and find something you like right off the bat! It’s available right here for you and it’s absolutely free! All you have to do is join the JinbuPal email list by entering your email address in the popup on this link and you’ll have free access as long as you remain subscribed to the email list! It doesn’t get simpler than that!

The rest of this post is a walkthrough of how to use the library, so I’d encourage you to go ahead and visit the YouTube Library and enter your email address so you can get started and follow along.

Here’s what you’ll find in the AirTable spreadsheet inside the YouTube Library.

Each channel has the following details filled out:

  • Channel Name
  • Category
  • Typical Subtitle Format
  • Subtitle Style
  • Topic
  • Direct Channel Link

You’ll also find separate tabs for Movies and TV Shows, each of which have similar breakdowns of details, such as directors, awards, etc.

You can easily apply filters throughout the AirTable in the YouTube Library similarly to how you would do this in an Excel spreadsheet. If you need more information, check out the following images which show how to turn filters on and off as well as how to activate filters for specific columns. You’ll be able to sort and filter the listed channels based on topics you’re interested in to find content just for you.

Using filters:

Sorting:

Example After Filtering and Sorting:

Depending on your current skill level, you may want to filter the channels by subtitles. Digital (or “soft”) subtitles will be the easiest for you to make use of if you’re working a lot on your vocabulary and encountering new Chinese characters. These soft subtitles will be compatible with popup dictionaries, such as Zhongwen.

Lastly, if you haven’t already, I’d highly recommend you read through our posts on how to utilize YouTube as the ultimate language learning tool and ways to find Chinese content on YouTube. Trust me, you will not want to miss out on the information provided in those posts because they should really help you see how incredibly powerful YouTube can be for language learning.

Also, check out our related video with some extra tips on how to search for Chinese content on YouTube.