I listened to this on the drive to school with the kids. I love how ShaoLan dives into the history of the word, explain the roots and how it is relatable to the current world we live in. She interviews an inspirational individual every episode and in turn, teaches them Chinese. I love this concept!

7 minutes is the perfect amount of time for a healthy language snack. ShaoLan makes learning fun and helps reinforce a daily study habit. I’m a fairly new listener and episode 20 is my favorite so far. Funny and useful 😊 Rating individual episodes: E315 Love the comprehensive list of shoe related vocab: 鞋子。皮鞋。布鞋。女鞋。球鞋。男鞋。童鞋。穿鞋子。脱鞋。（take off shoes and also means ”slippers”）， 鞋店。Also, ShaoLan does an excellent job of refocusing the discussion back to 鞋子。👍 Just downloaded and bought the Chineasy app. On first try it looks like a very solid app but honestly I bought it to support this channel which I’ve found immensely useful.❤️

I’ve tried a lot of language learning podcasts, and this is the best by far at breaking down each word and explaining everything. Fantastic!

I’ve been trying to learn Chinese for years. I love the short, topic specific shows that I can listen to in the morning as I’m getting the day started. I always find something useful, interesting, and since I’ve been listening to Chinese for many years, but struggling to really understand it, this show helps me enormously with understanding daily conversations! Thanks so much.

Great podcast and especially well-structured for beginners, but it’s really beneficial for ALL levels. Two things this podcast does extremely well: Brevity and outlining of interview questions Chinese etymology Never stop learning! As an upper intermediate/advanced learner, I must admit I play it at 1.5-2x speed but I keep coming back to this excellent short form podcast for Shaolan’s breadth of knowledge and juicy bits of cultural and hyper detailed etymological wisdom that I don’t get from long form, Mandarin-only podcasts. I LOVE the etymology bits. She is an exceptional teacher and her radio voice exudes compassion and zen clarity! Recently I’ve also been loving the occasional forays into classical poetry and literature. 非常感谢您!

This podcast is habit-forming. The host is a great and worldly interviewer and her conversations always entertaining and fun. The explanation of words and characters is helpful and practical. The podcast has only gotten better since I began listening. Great way to build vocabulary and cultural knowledge. Please keep up the good work, Shiao-Lan!

This podcast is amazing I love it so much! Shaolan does such a good job at teaching and the podcasts are the perfect length. Every subject is interesting and I leave each podcast with knew knowledge. I especially love that Shaolan explains why the characters look the way they do, and their history. I would love to meet Shaolan she is so funny! She’ll be like “你好, 你最近好吗” and some random British guy on the podcast will be like “shay shay!” It makes me laugh so hard I honestly love and learn so much from this entertaining podcast.

I love this podcast. It’s super quick and yeaches you practical words in Chinese with context on how it’s used and the origin of the characters. I love that some words are more colloquial and would be things you don’t learn in a textbook. It really helps to make a language I once thought was so intimidating way more accessible.

Do you teach Mandarin or Cantonese?

Incredibly helpful, entertaining and educational! Keep up the great work! Xie xie!