In July 2024, I went to China for the first time with my lovely Chinese girlfriend, who arranged and helped
throughout the entire trip. Navigating a completely new world for me, I was amazed by the writing, the food
shops everywhere, and the incredibly beautiful old architecture. I absolutely loved it.
After this trip, my desire to learn my girlfriend’s language and culture — to feel closer to her —
**skyrocketed**.
In this blog post I want to document my journey learning Chinese, in the hope that it helps someone on a
similar path, and also for my own self-documentation :).
As always when I want to learn something new, the first thing I do is explore Reddit and YouTube for advice.
After some research, I started using the app HelloChinese. Although paid, I think it is one
of the easiest ways to build a solid foundation. It’s similar to Duolingo (before they introduced the “AI
slop”), but even better because it’s specialized for Chinese. I especially enjoyed the game section where
they gamify character recognition.
At this time, I began building a study habit. Although forming a habit is difficult at first, sticking with
it makes it easier. In the beginning, my habit was simple: one lesson per day.
From August 2024 to early September 2024, I completed my lessons every day. Still highly motivated, I signed
up for the Beginner Mandarin Course at the Confucius Institute at the University of Aveiro.
Since I lived just 10 minutes away by foot, I thought: why not? I wanted the course to complement my
HelloChinese study with speaking practice and to really solidify the basics. It was a typical 1-year course
with two classes per week, 2 hours each (4 hours/week).
From September 2024 to December 2024:
- 4 hours/week of traditional classes
- 1 HelloChinese lesson per day
At the end of December, my YouTube recommendations were flooded with Chinese-learning videos. A very popular
channel appeared: an English medical student named Will Hart. After watching his first
video speaking Chinese, I was shocked and immediately wanted to try his methods.
I decided to stop HelloChinese and start using Anki every day to learn and review new
words. My character recognition skyrocketed. The method is mentally exhausting and boring at times, but it
truly works. I went from about 100 characters to around 2000 characters.
From December 2024 until October 2025:
- Mostly 10 new Anki cards per day (varied over time)
- 4 hours/week traditional classes (until June 2025)
- Casual listening to podcasts
- Casual watching of Chinese videos
In October 2025, I started using another service that I think is a game changer for my learning:
Migaku. Anki was excellent for memorizing characters and words, but it lacked context and
listening practice. I spent around 40 minutes per day just doing reviews, and afterward I didn’t feel like
studying more. So every day I ended up doing only Anki — great for brute force memorization, but not ideal
for listening skills.
I switched to Migaku because my Anki deck was premade (a 5k common words deck). Since I didn’t have to mine
words myself, I ended up skipping input entirely because I was too tired after Anki. Migaku gives me a much
better balance.
From October 2025 until now:
- 30 words per day on Migaku SRS
- 60 minutes of sentence mining
Some things I wish Migaku had (in order of priority):
- Offline SRS work — a game changer, especially on the subway.
- Exporting data — SRS cards to Anki, word states, etc. If the company ever shuts down, I
want my data.
- More reliable mobile card creation — on my old iPhone 12 the mining feature rarely
works,
but it’s not a dealbreaker since I can mine on my computer.
Overall, I’m very happy with my progress, and I plan to keep using Migaku for the foreseeable future. My
listening skills have improved a lot, and I can now understand beginner to intermediate podcasts with some
effort. My goal for the next year is to understand native podcasts like 《罗永浩的十字路口》.
I believe that once I can follow a native podcast I truly enjoy, my Chinese learning will grow
exponentially — because it will finally feel effortless.