What is QQ?

Hi! My name is Tyson, this is my website. If you are trying to learn Chinese at the moment, whether you are a beginner or have been studying for several years, QQ will definitely give you the opportunity to improve your Chinese skills.

I started using QQ in October 2003, after I had finished my second year at university. It was holidays at the time and there was nothing to do, so I decided to study Chinese. I met a Chinese girl on ICQ who suggested that I use QQ to help my language study.

At the start chatting with people in Chinese was a little difficult. I couldn't read Chinese characters, I couldn't understand or say anything in Chinese. But I kept at it every day, using a combination of online translators to help me communicate. Looking back now, QQ really did provide a great environment to learn Chinese. People will just add you, and expecting that you can speak Chinese. They always ask the typical questions, like "Where are you from?" and "What's your name?" in Chinese, which provides a great chance to learn the basics.

On average, I probably spent about 4 to 6 hours per day using QQ, chatting in Chinese. After a year or so of learning Chinese this way I decided to test myself, to see how many Chinese characters I could recognise.

I worked out I could recognise around 800 characters, mostly the most commonly used characters in Chinese. It seemed that without even trying, just enjoying chatting with people online in Chinese, I picked up the language really quickly.

I also downloaded and watched a lot of Chinese drama series (mostly from Taiwan) which helped my pronunciation. Within 2 years I could speak fluently with other Chinese people, without even needing a dictionary.

After four years of learning Chinese, 2007 was the year of my first trip to China. It was a great experience to be able to join on conversations with my girlfriend's family, to be able to make new friends, to not have to worry about language problems.

So if you want to really learn Chinese - not just in the classroom - I really urge you to install QQ, register yourself a number, and join the Chinese online community. Even if you can only spend 30 minutes a day chatting online, using QQ will make a noticeable improvement to your Chinese fluency. Give it a go!

QQ Facts

QQ is a IM chat program like MSN, ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, etc. It is the most popular chat program in mainland china. It is made by the Tencent (腾讯).

You can download the Chinese or the English version of QQ. I initially reccomend that you use the english version. After a few months, when you know your way around the program, you can update to the latest version (in chinese).

Like MSN, QQ saves your contacts on the server, so you can use it anywhere. You will need to change your page table to China (PRC) ie. GB2312 encoding. Otherwise you won't be able to see chinese characters in your chat window. You can also use AppLocale.

It's best if you have a webcam. Most chinese won't believe you if you say that you're not chinese. Trust me! Having a webcam will also make you very popular - expect to have many people add you if your details specify you as living in a foreign country (国外) and you have a webcam.