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.

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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.

Sunny Horstmann was born in Taiwan and moved to the U.S. at age 8, so she is a stuck-between-two-worlds kind of guest in terms of being a bit too ABC/ABT for recent immigrants, and a bit too "FOB-y" for actual American-born Mandarin speakers. (Side note: what a throwback it is to hear "FOB: 'fresh off the boat'" again, am I right?)

Although Sunny grew up confident in her own Mandarin speaking abilities, once she became a mother and wanted to raise her own kids in a bilingual environment, she felt daunted by the task and alone in her pursuits. That's what motivated her originally to start her popular Instagram account @spotofsunshinechinese, where she shares advice and creates community for others wanting to pass on Mandarin to their children.

Sunny took things a step further and recently created her own set of kindergarten-level Mandarin teaching materials . She was inspired to make this 31-week, day-by-day curriculum because she recently started teaching her younger son Mandarin and was unable to find a comprehensive curriculum, so she built it herself!

Angela was inspired by and felt such resonance with Sunny, since that is the exact spirit that motivated Angela to create Real You Mandarin in the first place to help ABCs, ABTs, and other advanced Mandarin learners learn how to express their true selves in Mandarin.

In this episode you'll learn vocab like: 不知所措 / bù zhī suǒ cuò / at a loss, 孤單 / gū dān / lonely, and 鳥不生蛋 / niǎo bù shēng dàn / the middle of nowhere.

You can find Sunny on Instagram at @spotofsunshinechinese and click HERE to learn more about her Joyful Beginnings bilingual course materials made for teaching Mandarin to kids ages 3-6. Use code REALYOU for 20% off thru 7/31!

And if you want to give yourself the tools necessary to tackle the emotional and gentle parenting scenarios that are bound to come up in the process of teaching your kids Mandarin, check out our Real You Mandarin: Self-Expression course that teaches you how to discuss the entire range of emotions we experience as multifaceted humans, and also features an entire module dedicated to Fertility & Parenting that can help you work through big feelings and insecurities that your kids may have.

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

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

Ching Ching is another Taiwanese friend that Angela met through her Japanese language school in Kyoto. They actually first met through a double date with their husbands, since Ching Ching was in the same Japanese class as Angela's husband!

Although born and raised in Taiwan, Ching Ching has lived the past almost 13 years in Norway with her husband, and now speaks intermediate to advanced level Norwegian. On top of speaking Mandarin and Taiwanese (Hokkien), she also speaks English, and is a pretty advanced Japanese speaker as well!

We free flow chat about everything from dating/marriage culture in Taiwan vs. the West, to how our Japanese learning journeys were different as a Taiwanese vs. American-born speaker, to even the woes of needing to turn on subtitles for our own respective native language shows (Mandarin for Ching Ching and English for Angela, lol!).

In this episode, you'll learn vocab like 中氣很足 / 中气很足 / zhōng qì hěn zú ("speaking with strong projection" / "having a powerful vocal energy"), 註冊 / 注册 / zhù cè ("to register/create an account"), 歐美語系 / 欧美语系 / ōu měi yǔ xì ("Western languages, esp. European & American languages"), and more.

If you like learning Mandarin through the podcast, go deeper by joining the Podcast Transcript Membership to unlock full episode transcripts in Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Pinyin, English, with vocab highlighted. Download episode 1's full transcript for free to see the format before you join.

If you like learning Mandarin through this conversational format, join our latest course Real You Mandarin: Self-Expression, where we teach you how to navigate some of life's toughest conversations, from expressing your emotions, interpersonal relationships, fertility & parenting, caring for aging parents, to self-growth. Try a free lesson to see the exact course format before joining!

Learn more about all of our resources at https://www.realyoumandarin.com

Sean and Angela met in Japan at a local Japanese language school and got to know each other as classmates speaking only Japanese with each other up until recording this podcast episode together.

Sean Hsieh was born and raised in Taiwan through age 13 when he moved to Singapore to attend an American-style international school. He took an extreme approach to this big life shift by deciding to cut off Chinese altogether and fully immerse himself in English for those 3 years, even if he couldn't speak it at all when he first got there. Thanks to that all-in mindset, he now speaks fluent American-style English. But looking back he regrets not prioritizing also improving his Mandarin, as he now feels subpar in that respect.

Since so many of us are American-born Mandarin speakers, it was interesting to hear Sean's description of his Mandarin level as "not very good" since compared to many of us ABCs/ABTs, his vocabulary range is much wider than what we grew up with, he knows all the Chinese characters, and grew up in the culture/society through his early formidable years. It just goes to show how relative and personal each person's language journey is!

In this episode, you'll learn vocab like 觀點 / 观点 / guān diǎn ("point of view" / "opinion"), 極端 / 极端 / jí duān ("extreme"), 打從心底 / 打从心底 / dǎ cóng xīn dǐ ("from the bottom of one's heart" / "genuinely" / "sincerely"), and more.

Go deeper with your learning from the podcast by joining our Podcast Transcript Membership, which includes full episode transcripts in Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Pinyin, and English, with vocab highlighted. Download the first episode's full transcript for free to check out the format before joining: https://www.realyoumandarin.com/podcast

And if you like improving your Mandarin through this conversational style format, check out our course Real You Mandarin: Self-Expression taught through video-lessons of realistic dialogues teaching you real life vocabulary to navigate some of life's toughest challenges, including expressing your emotions, interpersonal relationships, fertility & parenting, caring for aging parents, and self-growth. Try a free lesson and learn more at https://www.realyoumandarin.com

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

In celebration of my first Asian-American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month living outside of the U.S., I'm reflecting on my Taiwanese-American identity and how it's evolved since immigrating to Asia.

As someone who was constantly insecure about both my "American" and "Taiwanese" identities growing up in the U.S., living outside of that context has finally helped me accept both.

Here in Japan, I'm constantly reminded of how "American" my personality, my point of view, my humor... all of it really is. And with my Mandarin being stronger than my Japanese, I've found a sense of connection with other Mandarin speakers living here and finally feeling more confident about my Taiwanese identity for the first time in my life.

In this episode, you'll learn vocab like 亞太裔傳統月 / 亚太裔传统月 / yà tài yì chuán tǒng yuè ("AAPI Heritage Month"), 少數族群 / 少数族群 / shǎo shù zú qún ("minority ethnic group"), 兩極 / 两极 / liǎng jí ("polar opposite" / "very contrasting"), and more.

In celebration of AAPI Heritage Month, now through May 31st, if you join our Real You Mandarin: Self-Expression course, you'll get FREE lifetime access to the Podcast Transcript Membership ($100 value) to unlock full transcripts of all past and future episodes. Transcripts include Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Pinyin, and English with vocabulary highlighted. Simply forward your course purchase confirmation email to support@realyoumandarin.com to get complimentary access to the Transcript Membership.

Learn more about the Real You Mandarin: Self-Expression course and the Transcript Membership at https://www.realyoumandarin.com !

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