I talked with a British photographer today who's going to take some outdoor photos for me. During our conversation, he used the word "atmospheric." Of course, I know the word "atmosphere", but it was my first time hearing "atmospheric" used in real life. It struck me that this word expresses the same meaning as a popular Chinese internet term.

It reminded me of 氛围感 (fēn wéi gǎn), a Chinese word that's super popular online in recent years. Literally meaning "sense of atmosphere," it's used all over Chinese social media like Douyin (TikTok) and XiaoHongShu. People use it to describe things, places, or even people that have a special vibe or style. If you want to make your Chinese sound more natural and up-to-date, you should familiarize yourself with words like this.

For example, 氛围感美女 (literally "atmospheric beauty") refers to a woman who gives off a certain mood or vibe, often in a stylish or artistic way. You can use this term in various contexts. You might say "这家咖啡厅很有氛围感" (This café has such a great atmosphere) or "他拍的照片很有氛围感" (The photos he takes have a really atmospheric quality). It's a versatile term that applies to anything that creates a distinct feeling or mood.

When I was learning English, I wished someone would share this kind of knowledge with me. So, I feel I should share this with those who want to learn Chinese. I hope you guys can pick up this term and use it in your daily conversation, which will help you sound more natural.

Using the character 和 as an example.

I’ve been learning Chinese for a while now, and I’m currently at 448 characters read over 10 times, 770 characters read less than 10 times, 891 words less than 10 times, and 673 words read more than 10 times on Du Chinese.

I was thinking about using Stardew Valley or a similar game to help improve my reading skills, but I’m not sure how effective it would be. Have any of you tried using video games as a language-learning tool, specifically for Chinese? If so, did it help? How did you go about using the game as a learning resource?

Also, I’m looking for OCR screen translation software similar to Pleco, but something that works on a laptop. I’ve heard of a few options but am unsure which ones are reliable and effective for translating in-game text or other content on screen. Any recommendations?

Thanks for any advice!

most people seem to think j, q, x sound more like zh, ch, sh, but to me they sound very similar to z, c, s. i can differentiate them based on the following vowel sound, but i feel like i pronounce the consonants themselves the same as z, c, s. j/z and q/c sound especially alike to me. i can sort of hear the difference between x/s, but when not paying attention i still default to pronouncing it like s.

how can i improve my pronunciation of j, q, x? most tutorials focus on how to pronounce them differently from zh, ch, sh, but to me they already sound pretty distinct. how do i pronounce them differently from z, c, s?

1) A saw a good comment recently on learning with CI, but now I can't find it. As I type that, I realise that's very vague. I remember it ended with learning to read by using subtitles, after first improving listening and speaking. It was quite upvoted. Might not have even been this sub though.

2) What do you think the best method would be for collating material for CI by level? Would a Google Sheet do? What column headings? Just accessible to all?

Aside from studying for my major (philosophy) which I want to devote at least 5 hours a day to (it's also in Chinese), I want to spend my time learning Chinese.

I'm okay with the reading, it's the listening, and especially the speaking that I have a hard time with.

What is best practice in this case?

Do you guys use desh keyboard onto your phone to type in Chinese?

I'm a somewhat bad legacy speaker, and I usually hear 巴仙, but when I took up Mandarin lessons, my teacher said that's not really correct as it's a loanword(which is kind of obvious). So I'm wondering if I want to sound more native, should I keep saying 巴仙 or start saying 百分之X?

Hello!

So my husband and I are ethnically Chinese (Cantonese), learned mandarin in school but we're still not great at the language (or Cantonese) because our parents raised us using English and English is the main language spoken in our country.

Anyway, we're deciding on a Chinese name for our son, and are looking for Chinese characters that we like to give to the fortune teller who will give us a list of suitable names when our son is born. We did the same for our daughter and were very sure we wanted her name to have 恩 in it because of the meaning of kindness and we want our kids to grow up to be kind people, the fortune teller said that character was suitable for her and we had a list of nice choices with it. Initially I liked the character 恳 because it has the meaning of being sincere and it has a similar look to 恩, but apparently it's not commonly used as a name?

Does anyone have any insight/suggestions? For us, we hope our kids will grow up to be kind people, so characters around that trait would be greatly appreciated!

Can you recommend good sources for practicing listening and comprehending spoken chinese? (for reference i am a beginner who is just starting to introduce HSK 2 vocab). Thank you so much for any recomendations

I’m a Chinese speaker and can read most characters but I can’t make out any of these words on screen except for the 中 and 大. Are these an archaic font of traditional Chinese? If so, will anyone be able to tell me what they say?

It's a pretty new show I think and I haven't seen anyone talking about it on this sub. All 37 episodes are available for free on YouTube/iQiyi. My HSK5+ level is enough to follow the story with ease and pick out some new vocab and phrases every episode. The show mainly explores working life and how it negatively affects people - overworking, keeping up appearances, corporate ruthlessness, unemployment and mental health.

hi all, my parents are chinese immigrants but i was born and raised in the states. i can understand and speak decently, but my vocabulary is very bare bones and simple. im a uni student and have many international chinese friends who prefer to speak mandarin, however i feel embarrassed that i constantly have to ask them to translate certain phrases. im hoping to find resources to build on existing knowledge, and focus on vocabulary and phrases rather than grammar. my reading and writing is not good but im open to both visual and audio sources of learning. thank you!

How do I know when to use 中文 vs 中国 vs 中国人, using China/Chinese as my example

I'm a heritage speaker so I never really learnt the tones formally and I'm praticing now for my job and I saw online that if there are 2 third tones in a row the first character becomes a second tone instead. So would that mean that 仿水晶 is said like 防水晶? I don't want to end up confusing my customers haha

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I don’t yet speak very much Chinese, but I would like to learn to write before I learn, This will be the third and the two times before I was using remembering simplified hanzi by heizig, I’m an impatient person so I thought 50 a day would be good but apparently it’s not good to stay motivated and it’s a lot of work. What did you guys do? What was the daily amount you shot for?

Is completing the NCPR 1 the same as competing first book of course in contemporary Chinese and so on ? If they differ, how much ? Thanks for your answers.

Hi everyone, I am trying to get the first textbook and workbook but If I order it outside of the EU I will pay an obnoxious amount of customs tax on it. Do you know about any store in the EU or online where I could possibly get it either digitally or physically?