HelloChinese - Learn Chinese

3 star

My mom made me do this even though I am Chinese.

I used to really like this app. I have the membership still. But the amount of AI generated “art” and images they use in their new main course is horrendous and it looks awful and cheap. It’s prettt disappointing and it makes me want to cancel my membership and find a new platform to learn Chinese.

I paid for Premium Plus subscription and it does not work

This is just the simple "gamified" language-learning kind of app we've been introduced to by the likes of Duolingo, and recently (as of April 2026) this one decided to increase the nonsense clearly copied from Duolingo, apparently focusing on the bad things from that one.
First, it now nags you to "set up reminders". Daily.
Look, I don't need that and more importantly, if I tell you I don't want something, that means stop asking me. It definitely does not mean keep annoying me about it, especially as frequently as daily. This kind of annoyance is the main reason I left Duolingo, and I'm definitely not going to be fine with another app doing the same thing. Duolingo's "passive-aggressive style" gets mocked a lot, but it's definitely not cool, hip, cute or funny. Stop copying bad things from others.
Next, the speaking exercises are terrible. There are videos of native speakers trying it and being "rated" as basically non-speakers because the app simply can't get it right. It's gotten to a point where I just do them to get whatever minimum score for it to accept as done, but honestly, it's just a waste of time because all it does is to mark words in red without any other feedback, so you'd have to waste your time trying to figure out what is wrong or how to improve. Again: it does this to native speakers too, which shows that it's the app being bad.
Then there are the """interesting""" exercises where they show you a meme and ask to to make a phrase out of it, or complete a dialog, etc. This would be fine if they tried to remember that a picture without any context is prone to multiple interpretations, but instead they go with "oh, you can't figure out if this picture of a woman dragging a kid in front of a school means the school is ahead or the school is there or the school is behind? Well, you're wrong, that's the answer".
Don't get me started on the "my world" nonsense. This is a "story" of someone who suddenly woke up in a "different world", where apparently everything is exactly the same but exactly the opposite at the same time. You have to read a super boring essay about how person X in "their world" likes this or that, but in "this world" they don't, and then you have to answer boring questions about the differences. I thought this was supposed to be a "fun" way to learn a language, but I guess my idea of fun is too different. This ain't it, chief.
Teacher Talk has interesting topics from time to time, but most of the time it's just ever-longer podcast-style clips of random things and what they think about those, with little actual knowledge being passed. At least these are not mandatory to keep going (I think you can skip them) and the questions asked at the end of each podcast are easy enough to answer even without paying attention to the podcast (you still have to listen to each and every one of those if you want to get it marked as complete), but once again, "filler content" most of the time.
The good side from my perspective: I'm a foreigner living in mainland China. I have had "real" Mandarin classes years ago (about 18 months in total, but haven't had any since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic). I'm around HSK-2 level, so beginner to very early intermediate level. I've tried Duolingo and enjoyed practicing some of the language for a bit every day, and felt like it helped me keep the skill going, even if not improving (Duolingo only has a basic A1 module for Mandarin, and it doesn't get all features that mainstream languages there do). I quit Duolingo when I got tired of repetitive "lessons" because I had reached the end of the module, and a couple of years later (early 2026) decided to try this app.
It does have more content than Duolingo, but I'm not sure how far from its end I am. It still keeps me interested despite the above complaints, but at the same time I'm starting to wonder how long will it have positives to outweigh the negatives.
Finally, I really hope they address the issues described above, and instead of trying to find new ways to alienate its users, they just focus on more content.

I love this, i’ve been trying to learn chinese and this is the best app so far! It actually helped me and its very helpful
But theres just one problem
I’m in beginner 1 and when i try to click on ordering a cafe level, it shows me premium
It’s supposed to be my next lesson and i don’t know what to do
I want to learn more, but I’m just stuck there not knowing what to do next.
Please read this

You barely learn anyhting unless you pay 60 dollars a year for premium