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It’s our Christmas Special Mailbag.
We answer listener questions about real Chinese greetings, why “Ni Hao Ma” sounds unnatural, fear of flying explained by a pilot, and how to type pinyin with tone marks properly.
We finish with a fun Christmas quiz full of strange traditions and surprising facts from around the world.
If you’re learning Mandarin and want natural Chinese, not textbook Chinese, this episode is for you.
Topics include
• What to say instead of “Ni Hao Ma”
• Casual vs polite Chinese greetings
• Flying anxiety and turbulence explained
• Typing pinyin with tones
• Christmas traditions and trivia
Merry Christmas and thank you for listening to Mandarin Monkey.
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Ula explains why some dictionary and app translations feel unnatural, and shares a new Mandarin dictionary app recommendation. Then we mess around with a sound-guessing game, chat about school plays, and end with Tom quizzing Ula on the Life in the UK test.
00:00 Intro, episode 438, Wednesday energy
01:35 What subject do we look like we teach?
07:10 Midweek fatigue and kid sleep chaos
09:20 Why “dictionary Chinese” sounds unnatural
11:40 New app recommendation, 橘子漢語 (J-U-Z-I)
15:20 Free vs paid features, why it beats Pleco for usage
18:00 Nativity play recap, Bethlehem Bake Off confusion
24:35 Game time, People Places Projects sound guesses
25:55 Sound: vacuum cleaner 吸塵器
33:10 Sound: “personal trainer”, Schwarzenegger link
38:20 Sound: parking sensor, reversing beep
41:55 Next week schedule, last broadcasts, Christmas plan
43:20 Visa update and Life in the UK test quiz
48:15 Judiciary question confusion
50:55 Habeas Corpus question, 75% pass mark talk
58:50 Wrap
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Why doesn’t “How are you?” really exist in Chinese?
In this episode, we talk about how Chinese people show care without asking about feelings. Food, warmth, sleep, and daily life matter more than emotional check-ins. We also talk about sleep, anxiety, bilingual kids, accents, affection across cultures, and then completely lose control playing a sound guessing game.
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Friday mailbag time. Chinese and English together, as always.
Today you get listener stories about:
• Stress gestures that looked like a love confession
• Soft Mandarin that sounded like poetry underwater
• Motivation, guilt, discipline and VR boxing
• Ten minutes of bus auntie story with zero context
• Scooter fails in Taiwan and panic Mandarin
• Sounding fluent while saying nonsense
• Noodle theft in a Bristol flat
• Turning passive vocab into active speech
We talk through:
• How to describe emotions without strange vibes
• Why quiet Mandarin feels impossible to decode
• When to push through and when to rest
• How confidence helps even if the vocab falls apart
Email your story for a future mailbag:
chat@mandarinmonkey.com
Lessons, community, and all the good stuff:
mandarinmonkey.com
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A bilingual Mandarin and English episode filled with Christmas nonsense, food talk, and some heavier life planning.
We talk about UK food labels, sugar overload, and why buying cheese feels like a health exam. Then we drift into real life. Stress. Pressure. Planning the next five to ten years. And why that feels very different when you have kids, bills, and responsibilities.
Tom talks through moving to Taiwan with almost no plan. Ula talks about goals and why planning triggers old student stress. We look at how to balance enjoying the moment with taking care of future you.
If you want to practise listening to natural Mandarin and English in a real conversation, this episode is perfect.
You can book a free trial lesson at mandarinmonkey.com.
Send your emails for the Friday mailbag to chat@mandarinmonkey.com.
CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro
0:33 Christmas, turkeys, and the turducken problem
2:20 Giblets, guts, and Taiwanese menus
3:40 UK Christmas decorations and candy canes
5:15 Sugar, food labels, and supermarket misery
7:30 Comparing food labels in Taiwan and the UK
8:20 Sleeping positions and being the big spoon
10:50 Christmas hats, hoodies, and decorating the house
11:24 The smoke machine debate
12:40 Christmas lights and buying more nonsense
13:48 Teaching our daughter Mandarin
14:50 Talking about old homes and old decisions
16:10 How planning shapes the next 10 years
18:00 What peace, fun, and goals mean
20:00 Moving to Taiwan with no plan
22:30 Making mistakes when you’re young
24:40 Why planning feels heavier as an adult
27:00 Arriving in Taiwan with total freedom
30:00 Mixing living in the moment with long-term goals
33:00 Having things to look forward to
35:00 December Hangouts and lesson schedule
36:00 How to book lessons and send mailbag emails
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Friday mailbag. Mandarin and English. Real listener questions.
We start with a chat about long-term goals. Safety, peace, fun, love and connection. Where we want the kids to be in ten years. Where we want to live. How to build something bigger than “exercise more”.
Then the mailbag.
A night-shift worker in Leeds knows the vocab but freezes when building sentences.
A Birmingham listener orders bubble tea in Taichung without the cashier switching to English.
A software engineer in Dublin wants real conversations, not grammar workshops.
A listener in Seattle can hear J, Q and X but cannot say them.
A teacher in Wellington reads well but loses everything without subtitles.
We talk about progress, language habits, relationships, pronunciation, listening skills and how to keep going even when it feels slow.
Send your stories or questions to chat@mandarinmonkey.com.
For lessons or hangouts, visit mandarinmonkey.com.
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This episode starts in the strangest way possible, then turns into a full life update. We talk about Kairi wanting to learn Chinese, Dragon Ball socks, why none of us sleep, work changes, and the chaos of parenting three young kids.
We also get into
• How bad nights ruin your brain
• Why our youngest saves all his wee for nighttime
• New directions in our work
• Whether to make a movie at home
• How animation voiceovers actually work
• Moving abroad and the career gap problem
• New plans for Mandarin Monkey
• Our goal to set up a separate studio and a new company
• What’s coming next for us
It’s real, chaotic, and very us.
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We skip the small talk and jump straight into chaos. One of us wears noise-cancelling headphones with brown noise blasting. The other says sentences in Mandarin and English. The goal is simple. Lip read the line. No clues. No questions.
The results are a mess. “You squeezed it before I was ready,” becomes cheesecake. 羊羹 becomes “some kind of rat.” Twice becomes twat. And a totally normal Chinese sentence turns into Argentina.
If you enjoy Mandarin learning mixed with confusion, misread lips, and unearned confidence, this game delivers.
Send your sentences or game ideas to chat@mandarinmonkey.com.
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Wrong day, wrong week, right podcast. Today’s mailbag episode starts with that weird moment when your brain swears Friday arrived, but the calendar says otherwise, then drifts into lottery fantasies, nannies who only speak Mandarin, and baldness fear. Standard Mandarin Monkey energy.
Then listener stories:
• Daniel in Manchester used Mandarin to survive lockdown loneliness and asks how to practice speaking when nerves block every sentence.
• John in Southern California listened to the whole podcast three times and still wants more. Respect.
• Debbie in Lagos started Mandarin because C-drama subtitles missed the point and now fights double audio and dodgy subs.
• Olivia fell in from the short clips, forgets new words in days, and wants to keep going without burnout.
• Vivi did “immersion” in Kaohsiung, made international friends, defaulted to English, and now only understands Mandarin with heavy context.
We talk about:
• Why tutors hear every mistake already and still support learners
• How mirroring and shadowing native speakers trains tones and rhythm
• Why motivation fades and discipline keeps progress alive
• How to use scripts, news, and audio to train listening without subtitles
• Single-channel brains, overwhelm, and why context helps more than people admit
Bilingual as always. Ula speaks Mandarin, Tom speaks English, you follow along.
Send your story or question to:
chat@mandarinmonkey.com
or DM on Instagram / Facebook.
Your email might show up in the next mailbag.
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We put on noise-canceling headphones, blasted brown noise, and tried to read each other’s lips in Chinese.
Spoiler: “Are you the king of Mandarin Monkey?” turned into “Are you licking a mandarin monkey?”We also talk about Tom’s 3D-printed bust mini-movie, the “shi” tongue twister that broke him, and why bringing back the silly side of Mandarin Monkey might be the best idea yet.
Send your stories for Friday Mailbag: chat@mandarinmonkey.com
Lessons and more at mandarinmonkey.com
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Mailbag time. Phoebe’s moving to China in a week, Jasmine’s torn between Simplified and Traditional, Mark nails his first all-Mandarin order, Anna shares tonal research, and Katie reminds us to slow down. We talk avoiding the foreigner bubble, finding a “language parent,” sleep habits, and why progress feels slow, until it doesn’t.
Send your story: chat@mandarinmonkey.com
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Practice Mandarin listening with a native Taiwanese Mandarin speaker and English support. We cover cold-weather camping at 3°C, off-grid power, food, health, and planning a sensible motorbike tour through Europe. Great for beginners to intermediate, HSK prep, and heritage Chinese/Taiwanese learners keeping both languages fresh.
You’ll learn: camping and travel vocab, opinion phrases, modal verbs for suggestions, health/food terms, and natural Taiwanese rhythm.
Resources
• Free transcripts/clips on our YouTube (search “Mandarin Monkey listening practice”)
• Book a lesson with a Taiwanese teacher (all levels)
• Mailbag: send a short story (Mandarin or English) to chat@mandarinmonkey.com
for feedback
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Today’s Listener Mailbag is stacked: Mandarin at the bus stop, writing a sky-lantern wish in Pingxi, ordering dinner in Kunming with zero English, the strange peace of visa lines with a podcast in your ears, and a market auntie gifting a spring onion for luck. Plus: dogs, Edinburgh place names, and whether American English secretly makes more sense. Perfect for immersive Mandarin listening practice - Ula in Mandarin, Tom in English - so you can follow along and pick up real phrases in context.
Send your story for a future episode: chat@mandarinmonkey.com
Book lessons / join the community: mandarinmonkey.com
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Hump day chat with bilingual Mandarin + English listening practice baked in. We tackle a parenting standoff over toys at school, how “Thrill of the Fight” in VR turned into a 12-round sweat fest, whether gua sha helps or just hurts, Halloween safety (and trunk-or-treat), British politeness vs Taiwanese directness, and a surprisingly decent side hustle: cleaning garages for cash.
Send us a story for Friday’s Listener Mailbag: chat@mandarinmonkey.com
Lessons, hangouts, intensives: mandarinmonkey.com
Topics: Mandarin listening practice, VR boxing, gua sha scraping, UK vs Taiwan culture, Halloween UK, trunk or treat, side hustles, bilingual conversation.
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Ever tried to learn Mandarin while you sleep?
One listener did — and his girlfriend woke up to him whispering “māma” all night.
In this episode, we read your wildest Mandarin stories:
🧠 Sleep-learning experiments gone wrong
🐟 The “train station” that turned into a pet shop
💔 The couple arguing about the third tone
🙊 Why Chinese speakers don’t say “bless you”
and much more from our Listener Mailbag.
This is real Mandarin listening practice — with jokes, accents, and stories from actual learners.
📬 Send us your story: chat@mandarinmonkey.com
🎧 Listen anywhere: mandarinmonkey.com/podcast
🗣️ Book lessons: mandarinmonkey.com/lessons
🎥 Shorts & clips: @MandarinMonkey
#LearnMandarin #MandarinPodcast #MandarinListening #ChineseTones #LanguageLearning #MandarinMonkey
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This one’s part London adventure, part Mandarin listening practice.
Tom celebrated his birthday and 10-year anniversary with Ula — a surprise visit from Auntie Kara, a Studio Ghibli stage show (“My Neighbour Totoro”), London’s best steak at Steak & Company, and an escape-room fail that turned into a win… with only 18 seconds left on the clock.
It’s a bilingual Chinese–English episode, so you’ll get real, natural Chinese with clear English context — perfect for learners who want genuine Mandarin conversation, not classroom scripts.
🎧 What’s inside:
📍 Chapters:
0:00 – Hump Day & intro chaos
2:45 – Birthday surprise & planning
6:40 – London trip + Totoro show
12:30 – Japanese restaurant adventure
17:40 – Theatre review
22:00 – Covent Garden wander + 5G rant
25:10 – Best steak in London: Steak & Company
30:20 – Underground games & escape-room fail
39:00 – Alice in Puzzleland redemption
43:50 – Westfield, mystery board game & wrap-up
Want to learn Mandarin with us?
Book a free trial lesson: https://mandarinmonkey.com
Say hi: chat@mandarinmonkey.com
#ChinesePodcast #MandarinListening #LearnChinese #BilingualPodcast #LondonTravel #StudioGhibli #EscapeRoom
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Listener Mailbag is back. This week your stories cover first Mandarin wins, night market fails, and everything in between. We read your emails about dreaming in tones, KTV redemption songs, taxi mistakes, and the joy of ordering food without pointing. You’ll hear how small slips turn into lasting lessons, why confidence matters more than beer bravery, and how to keep learning when tests and tones trip you up.
Send your story: chat@mandarinmonkey.com
Lessons, hangouts, and intensives: mandarinmonkey.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Learn Mandarin through real conversations. Episode 422 covers wild camping, from rain and wind in the UK to snakes and bears in Taiwan. Pick up camping words in Chinese, hear how to talk about fishing and food, and enjoy bilingual chat in English and Mandarin.
Key Mandarin words from this episode:
野营 (yě yíng) – wild camping
帐篷 (zhàng péng) – tent
篝火 (gōu huǒ) – campfire
蚊子 (wén zi) – mosquito
獾 (huān) – badger
蛇 (shé) – snake
熊 (xióng) – bear
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Your emails, your questions, your Mandarin struggles.
In this first Listener Mailbag, we tackle:
• Tone panic ordering 牛肉麵
• How to pronounce 出去 without tripping
• ü vs u, and why “iu” sounds like “yo”
• Zhuyin vs Pinyin — which works in Taiwan
• Why HSK tests don’t prepare you for street speed
• Training your ears to real Mandarin
• Karaoke learning, flashcard guilt, and more
Email your questions to chat@mandarinmonkey.com and we might answer them next time.
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Is Mandarin really that hard to learn? How long does it take? Should you learn simplified or traditional characters? In this episode, we answer the most-searched questions about learning Mandarin and share real tips from our own experience.
You’ll learn:
How to start learning Mandarin
Whether tones really matter
The fastest way to get conversational
Free and paid tools that work
How to stay motivated and avoid the plateau
Grab your free Mandarin lesson at MandarinMonkey.com and join a global community of learners.
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