Whatever you care about, in Chinese

I'm Chris. I started learning Chinese in 2017 and I've never been able to let it go.

Fascinated from the start

The language, the history, the culture, the food: China fascinated me long before I could read a single character. I studied Chinese at Leiden University and spent part of my studies at National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei. It was one of the best times of my life. I wanted more than to get by. I wanted to really speak it.

Then I came home

Back in the Netherlands, Chinese suddenly felt far away. You find it online or in a Chinatown, and when you finally gather the courage for a short conversation, you end up saying the same few sentences again. It doesn't feel like progress. It only proves you haven't forgotten.
I tried everything to keep going. There was no shortage of material, but most of it was scattered and shallow. Textbooks taught me to post a letter. I wanted to talk about my own life. And in every real conversation, there was always something: a word I didn't catch, or a text I almost understood, missing just enough characters to keep me guessing.

What finally made it stick

Words stay when you can connect them to your own day. Learn how to order ginger in your soup, and you'll think of it every time you eat soup. If a word never shows up in your life, you'll forget it, however many times you've repeated it.
Real progress takes effort. But the material has to be worth that effort.

So I made the material I was looking for

Today I teach Dutch at a secondary school, with Chinese as a second subject. I see every day how much easier a language becomes when it's about something you care about.
A Field Guide takes you into the field, into your own life, one topic at a time. Each one is built around real Chinese texts, with every new word and grammar point explained, and reviewed by a native speaker. My character writing systems, used at Leiden University and at a secondary school, became the Writing Companion that comes with every guide.

Because everything is interesting

I want to know how to say that I hate ironing, and what happened when the lights on the Eiffel Tower went out. How to ask for more sliced ginger in my soup, and how many sets you've got left at the gym. What people say around a mahjong table, and what goes on in a Beijing park at seven in the morning.

Whatever it is, I want it in Chinese. That's what Home of Characters is for: the whole world, in Chinese.

What do you want to talk about?

Pick a topic you care about. Give it two weeks. Then pick the next one.

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