How I Learned Chinese by Myself

Hey guys, I'm Lily. If you're new here, welcome to my channel. I wanted to make this video because I think a lot of you want to know more about who I am, what I'm doing in China, and whether my Chinese is actually as good as I make it seem like. So I guess diving right in to answer that last one, we'll get started with some Chinese. Okay, that's enough proof for now. Let's get started. So the funny thing is I actually started learning Chinese when I was in South Korea. It was winter break during my sophomore year of high school. My sister was studying abroad there, so me and my parents went to visit her. Before that, she actually also studied in Japan, so I'd also gone to Japan, but I was significantly younger when I went to Japan. She was super into Asian culture. She even showed me like anime and K-pop and all of those things when I was young. And I loved both countries, right? I loved Japan and I loved Korea, but I also didn't want to be like my sister. I wanted to do my own thing. So one night in Seoul, I opened up Netflix and I clicked on a random Chinese TV show, one of the really soapy romantic ones, and I got instantly hooked because I'm a huge romantic. I didn't understand a word, but like the sound of the language and the rhythm, and of course the story, it pulled me in. That was the first time I ever heard Chinese properly, and from that moment, I just wanted to understand. So when I got back home to the U.S., I decided I was going to learn Chinese. I had no classes, I had no teacher, and I had no plans, just pure obsession. I listened to Chinese music like all the time. I watched hours of Chinese dramas on Netflix and variety shows on iQiyi and Tencent Video. I even would like, if I had a favorite song, I would look up the lyrics and I would write down the Chinese lyrics in my notebook with the pinyin, just so that I could learn how to sing them like by myself in my room. I also used Duolingo and HelloChinese and apps like that. I even used this app called HelloTalk, which is a sort of app that connects you with native speakers, although unfortunately, it was more like texting with native speakers than actually like speaking practice. But honestly, Chinese, it became more than a hobby, like it was an escape and a motivation and like comforting also because high school was kind of a lonely time for me. So Chinese sort of became this thing that gave me a purpose. It reminded me that the world was bigger than, you know, just the city that I was in. And it became my dream, it became my drive, like one day I will go to China and I will speak Chinese. And that dream gave me something to chase every day. So I would say after about a year or two of listening to TV shows and music and just studying, I realized that I could actually understand some of the sentences that they were saying without looking at the subtitles. Like I would catch a phrase in a song that I heard on a TV show and from the TV show, like I knew what it meant. And that felt incredible. But I still had a huge problem, which was that I had never spoken Chinese with a Chinese person or anyone for that matter. Everything was in my head. I understood it, but I didn't know if I could really say it. So I promised myself, first of all, that I would find a way to get to China. And second of all, that when I did, I would talk to people. And that chance finally came after high school. I got accepted into a program and I went to study abroad in Taiwan for a year. That's where everything really clicked. First of all, I got into the highest level class, which was really rewarding. After like four years of studying by myself, I was able to get into the top level class, which was very exciting. And in terms of the whole experience, I just told myself, like, you're not here to be perfect. You're here to practice Chinese. So I did. I talked to everyone. I talked to my host family. I talked to like shop owners. I talked to random people at cafes. Even when I messed up my tones and my grammar and someone poked it, like made fun of me, I didn't stop. Because every single conversation I had was like so rewarding. You know, it was proof that all the time I'd put in by myself was actually worth it. And it was everything I had ever dreamed of. You know, all of the effort and all of the late nights really just hit home and it became real. And it was a feeling that I will never forget. After Taiwan, all I wanted was to find my way back to China, specifically mainland China. So I decided to go to an international university in France because I knew they had a campus in Nanjing. And now I'm in Nanjing. Currently, I'm taking HSK4 classes, but I do feel like they're not as challenging as they could be. My ultimate goal is HSK6. I honestly don't really know how far I am from that, but it feels pretty attainable. But the most important thing that I've learned, it's that Chinese didn't just change the way I learned. Chinese didn't just change where I live. It changed the way I think. It taught me discipline. It taught me patience. It taught me that hard work always pays off, eventually. Which leads me to what this channel is really about. I want to show real China, the culture, the daily life, the warmth and the beauty that people outside I don't feel like really get a chance to see. I want to challenge stereotypes. I want to challenge the things that you see in the media in the West. And I want to share what I've discovered about living here. But also, I want to remind you, if I could learn Chinese completely on my own with nothing but Netflix and a notebook, you can too. You know, you don't need to be perfect or have a native tutor. You just need to want it badly enough. Passion and persistence will take you further than anything else. So if you've ever dreamed about learning Chinese or going to China, you are in the right place. Don't forget to subscribe and I'll see you in the next video, guys. Bye bye.