Hi everyone, Daniel from Hack Chinese here!
I am not naturally talented in languages: I took 7+ years of French lessons during my formal schooling, yet today would say my French proficiency is essentially zero.
At 25, I took my first Chinese class (almost by accident), and fell in love with it immediately: the characters looked so beautiful, the concept of tones was so exotic, and the long history behind each 成语 was fascinating.
Ten months or so after my first Chinese class, I quit my software engineering job in Boston to pursue a year of full-time Chinese classes in China at Peking University (Beijing) and Fudan University (Shanghai). I still remember sending my parents the “I’m leaving soon and will be gone for a year” email and anxiously waiting for my phone to ring. (They turned out to be supportive, thankfully!)
For a year, my days in China consisted of 4 hours of classes, 2 hours of 1:1 tutoring, and more self-study time than I like to admit.
At the end of the year, I was thrilled that I could finally communicate in Chinese, but I was frustrated that so many of my study choices (and the tools I had available to me) in the past year had felt so inefficient. Could I have made more progress given my effort? (Spoiler: definitely!)
Since then, I moved back to the United States for grad school, worked in Boston (and later transferred to Hong Kong), and then in 2017 quit my job to chase a dream: making tools to help learners of Chinese avoid the inefficiencies I did.
In 2018, Hack Chinese was born!
I’m so glad to be able to partner with LTL and point Hack students to a language school that puts so much emphasis on student outcome. And of course, I’m thrilled that many LTL students seem to be enjoying learning on Hack Chinese as well.
I’m still a student, but like Andreas mentioned in his post, it is challenging to devote much time to formal studying, especially when working at a startup!
Big thanks to LTL for inviting me to this forum. I look forward to helping create the future of Chinese learning!
