Latest posts
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5 Free Chinese Learning Tools I Built While Living in China (2026)
I’ve spent the past few months building free Chinese learning tools — one at a time, based on what I actually needed while living in China and studying the language. This post collects all five of them in one place, with a note on what each one is good for and when to use it.…
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Chinese Writing Toolkit: Model Essays and Sentence Banks for 11 HSK Writing Types
The HSK writing section trips up almost everyone. It’s not that learners don’t know Chinese — it’s that they don’t know the specific formats Chinese formal writing expects. An invitation letter has a structure. A complaint letter has a structure. A self-introduction essay has a structure. Get the structure wrong and you lose points even…
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Free HSK 1–3 Flashcards: 400+ Mandarin Words, No App, No Login
Most Chinese flashcard apps want you to pay for HSK packs, create an account, or install something. I couldn’t find a free browser-based option that just worked — so I built one. 400+ HSK1–3 vocabulary words. Spaced repetition. No account. No install. Open the page and start. Try It → Open Mandarin Flashcards — free,…
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20 Chengyu With Their Original Stories: A Free Tool for HSK4–6 Learners
成语 (chéngyǔ) are the four-character idioms that appear constantly in Chinese — news, conversation, WeChat, speeches. Once you hit HSK4, you’ll encounter them everywhere. The problem: every textbook explanation I’ve seen just gives you a translation and a definition. That’s not how you actually learn them. You learn a chengyu by knowing its story. Almost…
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Free Pinyin Annotator: Paste Any Chinese Text, Get Instant Pinyin Above Every Character
Last week I was reading a WeChat message someone sent me — full of characters I didn’t recognize. I needed pinyin above every word, fast. So I built one: a free browser tool that annotates any Chinese text with pinyin instantly. No app to install. No account. Paste text, click Annotate, done. Try It Free…
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I Turned 10 Life Simulators Into a Chinese Reading Lab
A few months ago I built a series of life simulators: ten historical figures, ten turning points, and a simple question — what would you have done? The simulators were in English. They worked. But last week I had a different idea: what if the same ten stories could teach Chinese? That question became the…
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Warren Buffett Said You Only Get 20 Investments in Your Life. I Built a Tool to Track Mine.
This is not a post about getting rich. It’s about slowing down enough to think. I used to check stocks every morning. Before coffee. Before breakfast. Sometimes before I was fully awake — eyes half-open, phone already in my hand, scrolling through price changes I had no plan for. I told myself I was “staying…
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My Reddit Account Was Frozen. My Tweets Got 2 Views. Then AI Told Me to Try GitHub.
This is not a post about getting rich. It’s about slowing down enough to think. I spent months writing content no one read. My Reddit account got frozen four months in — I still don’t know exactly why. My posts on X (Twitter) would go up, and two people would see them. Two. I checked…
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WeChat vs English Blog: My Friend Made ¥122 This Month. I’ve Made $0 After 6 Years of Trying.
Six years. That’s how long I’ve been trying to build something online. Different projects. Different ideas. Same result: roughly zero dollars. So last year, I started an English blog. My mom asked me what I was doing. I said I was building a website. She reminded me I’ve said that before — and asked what…
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A Teenager Asked Which Major to Pick. AI Refused to Answer. So I Built a Voting Tool.
I asked AI to pick the best major for my friend’s child. It refused — and the reason it gave changed how I think about education decisions entirely.
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I Tried to Promote My AI Experiment — and Got Blocked Everywhere
I ran what I thought was a genuinely interesting experiment. I gave the same World Cup prompt to 6 AI models — 3 Chinese (Kimi, Doubao, Qianwen) and 3 American (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude) — and asked each one to predict 14 real matches. Then I bought actual lottery tickets based on the results. They agreed…
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I Installed One Plugin and My Homepage Fell Apart. AI Fixed It — But Now I Have a Different Problem.
I spent 5 days on my WordPress site, installed a social sharing plugin, and my homepage fell apart. AI fixed it in hours. But what happened next surprised me more than the crash.
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Nelson Mandela Was Offered Early Release From Prison. Here’s What He Said.
In 1985, Nelson Mandela had been imprisoned on Robben Island for 21 years. South African President P.W. Botha offered him a deal: unconditional release, if Mandela would publicly renounce violence as a political strategy. Mandela refused. He had his daughter read his response aloud at a public rally, because he was not allowed to speak…
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Warren Buffett Made 7 Real Decisions That Changed History. Would You Have Made the Same?
Most biographies tell you what Warren Buffett decided. They don’t make you decide first. I built an interactive simulator that does exactly that. But before you play it, here’s what you’re actually being tested on. Seven real decisions. Seven moments where the greatest investor alive did something that most people would not have done. The…
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I Applied to Amazon Associates With Zero Audience. Here’s Exactly What Happened.
I knew nothing about affiliate marketing four days ago. I didn’t know what an Associates ID was. I’d never generated an affiliate link. I didn’t know what a W-8BEN form was or why a Chinese person living in China has to fill one out to earn money from an American company. Here’s the full honest…
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I Paid ¥3,840 for a Tutoring Class. My Son Couldn’t Even Ask a Question.
In January 2025, I paid ¥3,840 for my son’s tutoring class. That’s ¥240 per session, 16 sessions, one subject. It’s not an unusual price. In China, this kind of arrangement is completely normal — even expected. Every parent I know is paying something similar. What I didn’t fully appreciate until after I paid was the…
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I Built This Blog in 4 Days Using AI — And Now I’m Running a Live Experiment in Public (Follow Along)
This post is pinned and updated continuously. Think of it as a live reality show — except the budget is ¥700 (~$100) and everything is real. Come back anytime for the latest episode. A Declaration Before We Begin My child is in high school right now. Graduation is roughly five years away. I have five…
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I Built 10 Life Simulators. You Make the Decisions — Then See What They Actually Did.
The format is simple, and deliberately uncomfortable. You’re shown a real moment in a real person’s life. A door on each side. You pick one — A, B, C, or D — before seeing any explanation of what they actually did. Then the reveal: their choice, their reasoning, and what happened next. That’s it. No…
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My Son Asked a Normal Question. I Tried to Answer It With AI. I Aimed Too High. The AI Won’t Let Me Quit.
I built an interactive life simulator about Zhang Xue — the Chinese entrepreneur who beat Ducati at the World Superbike Championship. I don’t code, the button didn’t work at first, and I’m not sure it’s any good. But here’s why I kept going — and I need your honest feedback.
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5 Free Tools I Built to Think More Clearly About Stocks (and One for Your Career)
I don’t trust myself when I’m looking at stocks. That sounds like a strange thing to admit. But the more I’ve used AI to analyze my investment decisions, the more I’ve realized that the problem usually isn’t information — it’s me. My biases. My blind spots. My tendency to fall in love with a position…