Bubblegum is the one app we found that writes Northeastern Mandarin at your level: Poppy, its AI tutor, turns your interests into lessons in the speech of Harbin, Changchun, and Shenyang. Du Chinese and maayot give you graded Standard Mandarin stories that build the characters you'll read. Once local speech feels familiar, Northeastern TV, comedy, and a podcast give you hours more. Reading and listening to Chinese you can mostly follow is what's called comprehensible input.
A good target is a sentence where only one word is new and the meaning still comes through. At first, that's a short line such as 我搁家呢 (I'm at home), where 搁 is the only new word. Later, a whole scene gives you enough clues to work out a phrase like 咋整 (what do we do now) by yourself. For tutors, language partners, and phrase apps, see our Northeastern Mandarin app comparison.
Custom Lessons Made for You
Bubblegum
For serious learners, Bubblegum is the best app to learn Northeastern Mandarin. You learn from Northeastern Mandarin you can mostly understand, which is called comprehensible input.
Bubblegum gives you Northeastern Mandarin you can follow from your first lesson. Tell Poppy what you'd like to read about, like a weekend trip to Harbin or dinner with your partner's family, and she writes it the way people in the Northeast talk. The characters chat in local speech, and the narration keeps mostly to shared written Chinese.
The trade-off is that Bubblegum can't open a show or a video you picked yourself. For those, use the subtitle tools further down.
- Read and listen to Northeastern lessons, stories, and news about things you care about.
- Local words come in steps: 贼 (really) in your first lessons, and longer patterns such as 老……了 (so, really) a few levels later.
- Tap a word for its meaning, or open a grammar card about a local form.
- AI voices read each lesson in Northeastern speech.
- Regenerative Review™ brings saved words back in new lessons, so you review them by reading instead of using flashcards.
- Clear, expressive AI voices read every lesson aloud, with a different voice for each speaker.
- You cannot import your own books, articles, or videos.
- A new custom lesson costs us real money to make, so your first one is free, and Bubblegum Pro gives you unlimited custom lessons. The lesson library is free for everyone, because we believe everyone should be able to learn.
- Regenerative Review™
- Teaches Pinyin
- Traditional characters
- Zhuyin
Mobile
Read Graded Stories in Standard Mandarin
Northeastern Mandarin is written in Simplified characters and uses nearly all of Standard Mandarin's grammar, so graded Mandarin stories build your reading. The stories and their audio below are in Standard Mandarin.
Du Chinese
Du Chinese is a reading and listening app built around stories. It suits learners who want plenty of Standard Mandarin at one level before they add the Northeast. Du Chinese is one of the apps that inspired Bubblegum.
- Readings come at beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels.
- Tap a word for its meaning, pinyin, and audio, and see each sentence translated.
- Flashcards
- Traditional characters
- Zhuyin
MobileWeb
maayot
maayot gives you one short story at a time, sized for five or ten minutes of reading. It fits a session when you want one short read.
- Each story comes at your level, with a recording and a short quiz.
- Tap any word you don't know while you read.
- Review in stories
- Traditional characters
MobileWeb
Watch Shows With Subtitle Help
Language Reactor
Language Reactor adds subtitle help to YouTube and Netflix. Play one line of a Northeastern scene, read it, and replay it until the sounds match the words.
- See two sets of subtitles at once on YouTube and Netflix.
- Click a word in the subtitles for a pop-up dictionary.
- Doesn't teach Pinyin
- Traditional characters
Browser extension
LingQ
LingQ suits learners who've found a Northeastern video they love and want to study its words. Bring it in, read through it, and save the words you want to keep.
- Turn a YouTube video, a podcast, or an article into a lesson.
- See which words you know and which are new.
- Flashcards
- Traditional characters
- No Zhuyin
MobileWeb
Listen to Northeastern Speech for Free
Free shows and recordings give you real Northeastern voices once your lessons feel comfortable. They run from the gentlest to the hardest.
| What | What You Hear | Try It When |
|---|---|---|
| Julesy's guide to the Northeastern dialect | A speaker from the Northeast explains, in English, how the dialect differs from Standard Mandarin and why people find it funny | You're just starting |
| Country Love 18 (乡村爱情) | A village comedy filmed in Liaoning and produced by Zhao Benshan, on YOUKU's YouTube channel with English subtitles | You can follow everyday conversations |
| The Long Season (漫长的季节) | A 12-episode mystery set in a Northeastern factory town, on Tencent Video's YouTube channel with English subtitles | Longer scenes feel easy |
| 《卖拐》 | Zhao Benshan's sketch from the 2001 Spring Festival Gala, on CCTV's own channel, with no subtitle track to switch on | You can follow fast speech |
| 说咱东北话 | Thirty podcast episodes where the hosts chat about life in Northeastern speech | Most local speech feels easy |
Pick one scene, play it twice, and say in a sentence what happened before you move on. You'll learn more from one scene you follow than from a whole episode you don't.
Common Questions
Which Northeastern Mandarin app should a beginner choose?
If you are serious about learning Northeastern Mandarin, start with Bubblegum. Poppy writes lessons at your level about things you like. Or start with Du Chinese if you'd like graded Standard Mandarin stories while you learn your first characters.
Which city's speech is easiest to follow?
Harbin's. Linguists describe Harbin speech as the closest to Beijing's, then Jilin's and Changchun's, with Shenyang's the furthest. If a Shenyang speaker is hard to follow, go back to a Harbin voice for a while.
Who is Zhao Benshan?
He's a comedian from Liaoning who started out in 二人转, a Northeastern stage show where two performers sing, dance, and trade jokes. He performed comedy sketches at China's Spring Festival Gala from 1990 to 2011, and his comedy makes playful use of Northeastern speech.
Is Bubblegum free?
Yes. The lesson library is free for everyone, because we believe everyone should be able to learn. It holds lessons that other learners asked Poppy for. A new custom lesson costs us real money to make, so your first one is free, and Bubblegum Pro gives you unlimited custom lessons.
Sources
- Wikipedia: Northeastern Mandarin (Harbin speech is closer to Beijing's than Changchun's, and Shenyang's is the furthest)
- Du Chinese: Pricing and free lessons
- Du Chinese on the App Store (levels, tap-to-translate, and sentence translations)
- maayot on the App Store (free members get a new story every Sunday)
- Language Reactor on the Chrome Web Store
- LingQ on the App Store (import from YouTube and Netflix; unlimited lookups with Premium)
- Julesy: Why is This the FUNNIEST Chinese Dialect? A deep dive into the Northeastern dialect
- Chinese Wikipedia: 乡村爱情 (produced by Zhao Benshan, filmed in Liaoning, 18 seasons)
- YOUKU: Country Love 18, episode 1, with English subtitles
- Wikipedia: The Long Season (a Tencent Video series in Putonghua and Northeastern dialect)
- Tencent Video: The Long Season, episode 1, with English subtitles
- Wikipedia: Zhao Benshan (errenzhuan performer and CCTV New Year's Gala sketches, 1990–2011)
- Wikipedia: Errenzhuan (Northeastern song, dance, and comic dialogue for two performers)
- CCTV春晚: 小品《卖拐》, 2001 Spring Festival Gala
- 小宇宙: 说咱东北话 podcast
- Bubblegum
- Du Chinese
- maayot
- Language Reactor
- LingQ
Checked on October 14, 2026 against each app's own pages.
