As of today (August 17, 2026)
Character Progression 汉字学习进度
2026-08-17
| Level | Remaining (not skipped) |
|---|---|
| HSK 6 | 5 |
| HSK 7-9 | 52 |
| Non-HSK | 35 |
| Total | 92 |
So, before I went on my trip at the beginning of August, I didn’t know that the new HSK 3.0 update was coming, and so I over ambitiously completed the character curriculum. Buuuuuuuut I learned way too many in the days leading up to my trip that I really don’t remember a lot of it. So, I went back to reset the last 50 characters I’d learned. Come to my surprise, my numbers are completely different lol. Then I saw all of the curriculum update posts!
I’m seeing some wonky numbers, so I’m just not gonna use my original table for now.
China Trip #2
I was in Shanghai for 6 days. I was supposed to be there for 4 days and then go to Hangzhou, but I happened to arrive in Shanghai right when a typhoon was coming for the region lmfao. The typhoon was closer to Hangzhou than Shanghai, so the trains heading south from Shanghai were all cancelled. I stayed in Shanghai an extra 2 days. I then went to Suzhou as planned for 3 nights, but I caught some sort of stomach bacterial infection and went to the hospital. I still got to see most of the things I wanted to see in Suzhou, but I didn’t get to do any tourism shopping lol. I came back to Shanghai for another 2 nights, and that was that! Overall, still a nice trip. I met my husbands friends, I got to see my friends, and got to see at least one new city. The weather was just all over the place. HUMID, RAINY, HOT, RAINY, WINDY, HUMID, WET. Luckily we were in a part of Shanghai that didn’t flood. Parts of Shanghai were knee-deep in water.
Emergency room trip in China cost me a total of maybe 400 rmb, all things included, which is around $60 USD.
Before Shanghai, I was in Belgrade (Serbia) for 3 nights visiting my grandma. Usually, Europe, especially Serbia, is so hot and humid in the summer. This year it was so dry!!! Even the Danube river was almost entirely dry, you could walk across the river because it was literally just sand and a few puddles!! Insane stuff. California is going to have a super wet winter in the coming 6 months. Really bizarre year overall.
HSK
I’ve signed up for the HSK 5 and the HSKK Advanced in October! They should have released the HSKK with HSK corresponding levels, but they have not done so yet.. so idk what to do lol. I’m in contact with the HSK director of that school, but she didn’t have any information on that change.
So now, I begin my 61-day cramming mode! The test is on October 17. It’s a little annoying that “official” new textbooks for HSK 4-6 haven’t been released yet. At the very least the HSK 4. Since the differences between HSK 3 and HSK 5 are pretty large, I would not depend too much on the HSK 3 books. I know that there are a million ways to study for this, and that the HSK is just one standard, but it’s just easier to prepare for the exam with exam-specific material.
The only reason why I’m so fixated on the HSK in the last year and a half is because it gives me a specific goal to work toward. I think studying for the HSK is still really good because knowing your basics can get you really really far in any language.
Language is reading, writing, listening, and speaking. I’m actually surprised that the speaking portion of the HSK was optional until now. I guess you could learn to communicate in a language without ever speaking it. I made many friends in Portuguese, Korean, and Japanese without ever speaking those languages aloud. However, I also lost those language skills way faster than I lost my Spanish speaking skills, most likely because I didn’t have the verbal anchor.
One thing that’s hard about learning Chinese outside of a classroom setting is that you don’t really get constant, regular feedback of teachers, let alone reinforce basics. There are some basic sentence patterns in Chinese that I find I’m not using as much as I should since I don’t really have the “need” to do so. The downside is that my spoken Chinese ends up sounding too simple, and maybe even lacking.
What to do!!!