Me and a bird

HearMandarin is made by an independent maker, a native speaker of Mandarin in Shanghai, and operated by Shanghai Zehengce Enterprise Management Consulting Co., Ltd. No committee, no investors, no growth team.

The site is built for adult self-learners. It is not directed at children, and nothing here is designed around a child audience.

The myna bird on the logo is the quality-control department. A myna learns to talk the way no textbook teaches: it listens, copies, gets it wrong, and tries again until the sounds come out right. That is also exactly how people learn Mandarin, which is why the bird is in charge.

Because hearing the language is the most basic thing a learner needs, and watching learners get charged for basics got old. So this site is built ear-first, kept free to learn on, and honest about its edges: exam versions, word counts, and the date we last checked them.

The complete online learning loop is free through Band 4: placement, all word lists with audio on every entry, graded readers to Band 4 and the text of every story beyond, survival scenes, tone training, every practice game, Review and Progress. No learning account; progress saves on this device.

The word map is built from the official HSK syllabus files, both the current 3.0 lists and the older 2.0 lists for cross reference. Sentences and stories are written in-house and machine-checked so they stay inside your level. Audio is produced rather than recorded in a room, one steady voice per role, and every clip is checked against the text it should say before it ships.

The full story, list by list, lives on the data sources page. Pro, the one-time purchase, adds the full 720-question test bank with explanations, flashcard decks for the words and the slang, spreadsheets and data files, offline audio, one long listening track per band, and printable word books.

Questions, bug reports, corrections, or a sentence that sounds strange: the bird reads everything at support@hearmandarin.com, and replies as soon as possible.