A myna bird learns to talk the way no textbook teaches: it listens, copies, gets it wrong, and tries again until the sounds come out right. That is also exactly how people learn Mandarin. Which is why a myna is the mascot here, and why every single word on this site can be heard out loud, slow and clear, for free.
Behind the bird there is one person: a native speaker in Shanghai who got tired of watching learners pay for something as basic as hearing the language, and decided to build the alternative.
Three promises hold this place up. Listen first: your ears learn faster than your eyes, so everything here is spoken aloud. Free stays free: the learning path never goes behind a wall. Honesty about the details: exam versions, word counts, dates. We read the official files and tell you when we last looked.