Personal reflections on learning Chinese, building tools, and figuring it out as I go.
三首诗
December 31, 2025
I wrote this in Chinese. It's three poems. There's probably many errors. But that is okay. I am learning. But more importantly, I am expressing myself in Chinese. And it means something to me to be able to do that. I hope it might mean something to you too. Feel free to translate this page if needed.
我好久没想一想这个一年半，所以我放了2024年和2025年的经验在一起。
惊讶
2024年过了
今年什么都
让我感觉
很惊讶
五月
第一次回国
苏州武汉南宁
六月回来美国
海关排队上
突然发现
我想开始
学习中文
我会学习
我会回国
带一年
我真想
我能
自己旅行
过一周
我武汉朋友
给我打电话
告诉我
他找到了
我寄养家庭
那我肯定
回国
见他们
过五个月
终于
三十一年后
再见了他们。
2025年也过了
今年也什么都
让我感觉
很惊讶
尝一下
中国
台湾
的生活
在中国
跟我美国好朋友
跟她始讲中文
突然开始异地恋
在台湾
开始一个博客
开始一个软体
回来美国
跟我室友
讲越来越多中文。
希望
我希望
我能
写中文
文章
诗歌
唱中文歌
看得懂
中文书
电视剧
电影
视频
听得懂
中文播客
做中国
菜
面食
泡中国茶
其实
我觉得
我已经
开始了。
我希望
我能
跟我女朋友
跟我室友
跟我寄养家人
跟我中国朋友
跟我台湾朋友
跟我美国新朋友
有越来越深的关系。
我希望
我能
回去中国
见我寄养家庭
见我朋友
回去台湾
见我朋友
玩的开心。
继续吧
如果对我的学习中文的目标成功的话，我会感觉什么？
我会有什么影响？
我会想什么？
其实我不知道。我是一个工程师。我什么都算。
总是问我自己，进步是多少？
但是对语言，我应该不管我的进步是多少。
为什么呢？我想一想我原来的原因开始学习中文。
第一个理由：我可以自己回国旅行，我不必要等一个会讲中文的朋友邀请我跟他们一起去，这是自由的理由。
第二个理由：我想跟很久没见的寄养家庭会沟通。
第三个理由：我发现我爱说爱听中文。跟我女友和好朋友的关系，发现完全新的方面。
第四个理由：我想帮助其他的学习中文的人，可以叫新朋友。
为什么我开始讲中文，感觉我们的关系越来越深？对这个方面，我不太知道怎么解释。但是我每次讲中文，听中文，让我感觉有舒服又感动。
所以呢，有什么意思？意思是我可以有目标，它们也给我鼓励，但是应该不管他们太多。就可以跟我的身边的人，专心我们的好关系。互相支持，一起长，一起去玩，一起发现新的我们的方面。专心这个过程，不管结果。2025年让我感觉很满意。继续吧。
- Gene
Building for Myself First
December 25, 2025
My goal is to become fluent, literally as fast as possible.
As I write this on Christmas evening, I've realized that I was a bit overambitious.
When I really got started on this project in August 2024, I thought it was the beginning of me building a startup. One in the conventional sense: identify a problem, solve it, market it to the people who need it. Find a way to support myself by doing what I love and helping people along the way. It was a beautiful dream. Win-win-win.
My goals, become fluent as fast as possible, and build a successful Mandarin Chinese learning app, well they appear to be aligned, but are in fact in conflict with one another. It's a chicken and the egg problem.
Building an effective app that could help millions of Chinese learners requires curating high quality native content. I am neither a native speaker, nor at a high enough level to ensure the app contains 100% naturalistic, native-level content. Most apps use AI these days to generate content, and I'm not strictly opposed to that. But because I am only at an intermediate level of Chinese, I am far from ready to offer a well-rounded Chinese learning app to the masses.
But what is aligned is building an app for me to use, so that I can accelerate my learning. So that is what I am doing. For right now, I'm not building for other people. I'm not building a pretty app. I'm not building a bug-free app. I'm building tools, powerful tools to help me learn Mandarin faster.
Once I'm fluent, I can offer both (1) reliable native-level content people need to feel they can trust and (2) an app developed by someone who super recently struggled through becoming fluent and knows the specific painpoints Chinese learners face.
- Gene