Discover new Chinese sites

Google and Chinese search engines

Google, as we mentioned, was banned from mainland China. Google.cn is now only a picture of Google in Chinese, that redirects to the Google Hong Kong site. The following two sites are well known Chinese search engines you can turn to.

百度, Baidu 

Baidu is China’s reigning search engine. It’s also much much more. Expect to find Baidu everywhere, from a search engine, obviously, to OS and phone provider, to online Wikipedia, thanks to its 57 services. Baidu is opening a Silicon Valley lab to work on R&D and rumor has it that Baidu Eye is on its way. Sound like Google much?

有道, Youdao

This popular alternative is Baidu’s Bing in a way. Youdao offers a range of services, including an exploration-worthy dictionary and translation service, which provides nice, current, English-Chinese sample sentences taken from the web.

Understanding social media in China

In a similar fashion to Google, Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus were locked out of China’s Great Firewall. You, therefore, need to turn to Chinese sites and social media to get your fill of socialities. Fret not, there’s plenty to choose from. In fact, 8 Chinese social brands were on the Most Valuable Social Media Brands list in 2012. Here are a few things to know.

A social war between two giants

Unlike in the US, where the roles are pretty clear-cut, in China, the hustle isn’t over yet. Two giants, Sina and Tencent are waging a war against each other to rule China’s social world.

Sina vs. Tencent in short

Basically (although that’s really simplifying things), Tencent rules the instant messaging world and social login with QQ. With over a billion registered users, QQ login is as omnipresent in China as Facebook connect is over here. Some apps and sites are pretty much QQ-member only.

On the other side, Sina rules the micro-blogging world with its uber-popular micro-blogging site Weibo (微博). (Tencent also has its own Weibo though, to make things more confusing.)

Sina Weibo has often been compared to Twitter but it’s a lot more than that. One of the first things you notice on this site is how incredibly active it is. It’s also (therefore?) a great way to learn Chinese.

Who’s Facebook in China?

Renren -人人网 – the dominant player?

When it comes to being the Chinese answer to Facebook, things are less clearcut. Renren is often said to be China’s Facebook with 170 million registered users and 45 million active users.

Truth is, while none of the others look as much like Facebook as Renren, sites like Kaixin001, Douban, Pengyou (Tencent) and QZone (Tencent) are also strong Chinese social network contenders. QZone, the oldest social media of the lot was even named QZone is China’s most valuable social media brand China’s most valuable social media brand in 2012.

Giants and new players

Some observers, however, base their comparisons on users rather than features and prefer likening Tencent QQ’s billion users to Facebook’s user base. Others see Sina Weibo as China’s answer to both Facebook and Twitter. But that’s not it. The third type of players, mobile chatting apps  – smartphone users are on the serious rise – have also decisively entered the playing field.

Chat apps like WeChat (Tencent) are already at 200 million users (including me) in two years and their userbase has spread all over the world, scaring even possibly the likes of Facebook. So who knows what the social media scene in China will look like in a few years.

There’s a lot more to be said about China’s social media sites and guessed about China’s future digital landscape. In the meantime, nothing beats trying these sites on your own to form your own opinion.

So prepare yourself to experience visually different sites, full of pop-ups and Chinese and give Chinese sites a try! If you want to start easy, Hootsuite has recently started offering both Tencent and Sina Weibo and Renren integration in its social management suite. Surround App also lets you enter the Weibo world, sans Chinese. And if you’re going in full-Chinese mode, the Zhongwen Cloze browser add-on is a good travel companion, as it instantly translates any word you don’t know.

Happy exploring! Let us know how it was!

The Nincha Team

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——- Credit:

Chinese Digital Landscape infographic by digital jungle.

The post Chinese sites: Discover China’s digital landscape appeared first on Ninchanese.

Because we believe there’s more to learning a language than just learning vocabulary and grammatical rules – although those parts are important too and we’re actively working on creating great features to help you learn those aspects in an intuitive way -, we’re also launching this blog.

Ninchanese blog will be all about Chinese culture. From the cultural attitudes, you need to know about to the random stuff that’ll make you go WTF?! And believe us, there are plenty of interesting, weird and awesome facts about China and the Chinese culture.

This summer head mask fad definitely belongs to the weird and awesome facts about China. 

What’s in Ninchanese blog

Why talk about culture? Because language and culture go hand in hand. Understanding a people’s culture is essential when learning their language. Learning a language without the cultural framework in which it exists is like eating Chinese food in most Chinese restaurants outside China: it’s bland. That’s because Chinese restaurants cook standardized, flavorless food they believe western customers like and want.

If you’ve ever been to China, you’ve probably realized that you’d never tasted an authentic Chinese dish before landing in China. Likewise, learning a language without learning the culture of the people that speak that language means learning a flavorless language.

And believe us, you’re missing out. In fact, discovering a new culture is also one of the most enjoyable aspects of learning a new language.  Hopefully, this blog’ll show you that.

Towards the best Ninchanese possible. We also want this blog to be a place where we can communicate with you guys, whether you are learning Chinese at school, learning Chinese for business reasons, working on your Mandarin skills for fun or whether you’re just curious about this country where 1,5 billion people live.

We’ll share what we consider essential when learning Chinese. There’ll be stories about learning Chinese and tips on how to improve your Chinese skills.

Lastly, Ninchanese blog will also be where we’ll post updates on how the creation of Ninchanese is going and how much longer you’re going to have to wait until you get to meet Nincha, your future favorite teacher.

We’re working hard on rolling out a beta soon. Stay tuned! And in the meantime, we hope you enjoy Ninchanese blog. Have fun learning Chinese!

The Nincha Team

Stay in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Try the best way to learn Chinese today.
Ninchanese is free to use!

Sign up now

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