Real You Mandarin: The Podcast

How does an American-Born Chinese (ABC) become fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese, Spanish, and English? Jasper (Jun-Hao / 君浩) grew up between New York, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Taipei, in a family that made space for every one of those languages.

Jasper is an American-born multilingual Chinese Puerto Rican whose mom is an ABC and whose dad is Puerto Rican. Between the languages spoken at home and the places he grew up, he has been speaking English, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Spanish for as long as he can remember.

We talk about the family rule that helped make that possible: whatever language was spoken outside the home was the one they were not allowed to speak at home. We also get into how growing up in different Chinese-speaking communities shaped his relationship to Mandarin and Cantonese, and why his experience is very different from the one a lot of us grew up with.

We talk about the assumptions people make when someone looks mixed but speaks fluent Mandarin, and the pressure many immigrant families have felt to prioritize English so their kids can fit in.

Later, Jasper shares how these questions about language, culture, and belonging have come up in his own dating life when his counterparts are gay ABCs, especially when thinking about what parts of culture he wants to pass down to future children. It is such an honest conversation about the ways language is tied to identity, pride, assimilation, and so many other aspects of our lives.

In this episode, you'll learn vocab like:
家規 / 家规 / jiā guī ("house rules")
有意見不合 / 有意见不合 / yǒu yì jiàn bù hé ("to have a difference of opinion")
無言以對 / 无言以对 / wú yán yǐ duì ("to be at a loss for words")

📝 Want the full transcript in Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Pinyin, and English with vocab highlighted? Join the Podcast Transcript Membership to unlock all past and future transcripts. Download a free transcript from episode 1 to check out the format before joining. Learn more at https://www.realyoumandarin.com/podcast

🎓 Real You Mandarin: Self-Expression is the course built for American-born Chinese (ABCs), American-born Taiwanese (ABTs), and advanced Mandarin learners who want to express their real selves in Mandarin. Try a free lesson today: https://realyoumandarin.com/real-you-mandarin-self-expression-course-overview

Follow us on Instagram at @realyoumandarin and on TikTok at @realyoumandarin

Is Tsukimi (月見) Japan's version of Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節)? Now that fall has rolled around here in Japan, I've started to notice a ton of "Tsukimi"-related ads full of imagery of the moon, rabbits, and autumn harvest, and I can't help but wonder.

In this a solo episode, I learn about the influence China had on Japan during the Tang Dynasty that originally brought the Chinese version of this holiday that has evolved into its own related but slightly different thing in Japan.

I explore the fun, more modern-day random traditions Taiwan vs. Japan has around this holiday (BBQ vs. McDonald's themed burger!), and ponder whether I'm really missing Mid-Autumn Festival from the traditional sense, or if I'm really missing the way I used to celebrate it as a Taiwanese-American in the U.S.

In celebration of Mid-Autumn Festival, use discount code "midautumn26" (all lowercase) for 25% off the full Real You Mandarin: Self-Expression course or any individual module, now through September 28, 2026.

In this episode, learn vocab like:
似曾相識 / 似曾相识 / sì céng xiāng shí ("strangely familiar / feels familar")
秋季豐收 / 秋季丰收 / qiū jì fēng shōu ("abundant autumn harvest")
廣告口號 / 广告口号 / guǎng gào kǒu hào ("advertising slogan")

🎓 Real You Mandarin: Self-Expression — the course built for American-born Chinese (ABCs), American-born Taiwanese (ABTs), and advanced Mandarin learners who want to express their real selves in Mandarin. Try a free lesson today to see if the format is a good fit for you.

📝 Want the full transcript in Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Pinyin, and English with vocab highlighted? Join the Podcast Transcript Membership to unlock all past and future transcripts. Download a free transcript from episode 1 to check out the format before joining.

Follow us on Instagram at @realyoumandarin and on TikTok at @realyoumandarin

Usually we talk about it the other way around: you learn the language, and you end up feeling more connected to who you are. Jeanne Chang's story runs in reverse. She decided she was Taiwanese first — and the Mandarin came after.

This is Part 2 of our conversation with Jeanne, creator of the bilingual parenting blog Mama & Baby Learn Mandarin and @mamababymandarin on Instagram. Supported in the conversation by Real You Mandarin: Self-Expression partner teacher Crystal Hsia, we explore how Jeanne's immense effort to learn Mandarin alongside her children has a lot to do with her identifying as being Taiwanese, despite being born in the U.S.

She credits this self-identification to having grown up from shortly after birth through age 5 in Taiwan, surrounded by family immersing her in the culture and the Taiwanese language. Her only regret is not having learned Mandarin alongside Taiwanese when she was a child, which is why she now spends so much of her time, money, and energy on helping her kids learn Mandarin properly.

Along the way, we also discuss the peer pressure her own kids run into at school in California, her own single day of Chinese School, and what happened when she spoke Taiwanese to an auntie at a market back in Taiwan.

In this episode you'll learn vocab like:
同儕壓力 / 同侪压力 / tóng chái yā lì — peer pressure
企圖心 / 企图心 / qì tú xīn — ambition / ambitious
試聽課 / 试听课 / shì tīng kè — trial class
…and more.

You can find Jeanne on Instagram at @mamababymandarin and all the resources she's put together on her blog at https://www.mamababymandarin.com

📝 Want the full transcript in Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Pinyin, and English with vocab highlighted? Join the Podcast Transcript Membership to unlock all past and future transcripts. Download a free transcript from episode 1 to check out the format before joining. Learn more at https://www.realyoumandarin.com/podcast

🎓 Real You Mandarin: Self-Expression — the course built for American-born Chinese (ABCs), American-born Taiwanese (ABTs), and advanced Mandarin learners who want to express their real selves in Mandarin. For other aspiring bilingual parents out there, the course includes a full module dedicated to Parenting and navigating this space of passing down the language to your children. Try a free lesson today to see if the format is a good fit for you: https://realyoumandarin.com/real-you-mandarin-self-expression-course-overview

Follow us on Instagram at @realyoumandarin and on TikTok at @realyoumandarin

What do you do when you want to pass Mandarin on to your kids, but you never really learned it yourself? Jeanne Chang — creator of the blog Mama & Baby Learn Mandarin and @mamababymandarin on Instagram — grew up Taiwanese-American speaking only Taiwanese at home. When she had her own kids, she decided to learn Mandarin right alongside them.

Jeanne joins Angela and Real You Mandarin: Self-Expression partner teacher Crystal Hsia to talk about what it actually takes to teach a language you're still learning: how she built her own resources when she couldn't teach her kids herself (including creating her own local Mandarin summer camp), and how digging into what existed back in Taiwan to immerse her kids turned into a blog she's now been writing for over 8 years.

Her own Mandarin is the proof — listening to this episode, it's hard to believe she didn't speak any at the start of her parenting journey. So to every bilingual parent and aspiring bilingual parent out there: you can do this too.

This conversation ran long, so we split it into two episodes. Come back for Part 2, where we get into identity.

In this episode you'll learn vocab like:
沉浸式 / 沉浸式 / chén jìn shì — immersion / immersive
過時 / 过时 / guò shí — outdated
學習曲線 / 学习曲线 / xué xí qǔ xiàn — learning curve
…and more.

Learn more about Jeanne and her work at her blog, Mama & Baby Learn Mandarin, and on Instagram at @mamababymandarin.

📝 Want the full transcript in Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Pinyin, and English with vocab highlighted? Join the Podcast Transcript Membership to unlock all past and future transcripts. Download a free transcript from episode 1 to check out the format before joining.

🎓 Real You Mandarin: Self-Expression — the course built for American-born Chinese (ABCs), American-born Taiwanese (ABTs), and advanced Mandarin learners who want to express their real selves in Mandarin. Try a free lesson today to see if the format is a good fit for you.

If you grew up outside of the motherland, have you ever found that you seem to care more about explicitly connecting with your culture (i.e., through seeking out specific types of food, celebrating cultural holidays, etc.) than your own family living in Taiwan and China? In this episode, Real You Mandarin: Self-Expression partner teacher Crystal Hsia and Angela discuss this interesting phenomenon.

We speculate that it comes down to our family members abroad growing up in the broader environment in which all aspects of culture are as normal and commonplace as the air they breathe - just stepping outside during Mid-Autumn Festival, you'd know immediately that it's that time of the year and feel it all around you. Whereas in the West, our family's culture is not baked into the broader environment, so we have to explicitly seek out the foods, the fashion, and actively practice the customs to connect with that side of our identities.

Another aspect is that for many of us who grew up in the West, we have insecurities about our Mandarin abilities. Because language is such a critical aspect of culture, and yet something that is hard to completely master and claim as our own, we tightly hold onto the other aspects of our culture that we CAN control.

In this episode, you'll learn vocab like 涉及 / shè jí ("to touch on / to involve / to concern"), 文化產物 / 文化产物 / wén huà chǎn wù ("cultural products - something created by, reflects, or results from a culture"), 稀鬆平常 / 稀松平常 / xī sōng píng cháng ("ordinary / everyday / commonplace"), and more.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments here on Spotify or on Instagram at @realyoumandarin or on TikTok at @realyoumandarin.

📝 Want the full transcript in Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Pinyin, and English with vocab highlighted? Join the Podcast Transcript Membership to unlock all past and future transcripts. Download a free transcript from episode 1 to check out the format before joining.

🎓 Real You Mandarin: Self-Expression — the course built for American-born Chinese (ABCs), American-born Taiwanese (ABTs), and advanced Mandarin learners who want to express their real selves in Mandarin. Try a free lesson today to see if the format is a good fit for you.