We resumed taking lessons with the former InstantMandarin.com teachers and curriculum this morning. InstantMandarin is being reborn. Here’s how you can get in on this enabler of Hanzi literacy.
In my recent review of LingoBus, I described it as a “cornerstone” of our efforts at online Mandarin education. Mixing up my metaphors for sport and fun, the second “anchor” of our Mandarin education has been InstantMandarin, the small, scrappy school from Chengdu, China. InstantMandarin.com officially closed its doors at the end of 2024, but it appears the people who made this online school successful are poised to stage a second great act.
The awesome-sauce that was InstantMandarin.com
Flash back to the craziness of COVID-times. My older son 方平山 started InstantMandarin classes around the same time he started LingoBus classes, taking his first InstantMandarin class on August 30, 2020. We loved how InstantMandarin strongly emphasized Chinese Hanzi character reading. Toward the end of his time with InstantMandarin, Sam方平山 was reading about science, American history, American literature, Chinese culture, philosophy, and many other topics, all in Chinese. This specific reading focus was quite unusual among online Chinese schools, and we were grateful for it.
The end of InstantMandarin.com
In early November 2024 InstantMandarin broke our hearts with the announcement that they would be closing on December 31. At the time I had almost 100 InstantMandarin lessons as stored credit. We were advised to hurry and use up our lesson balances before the bitter end. Challenge accepted! We did manage to somehow consume the entirety of our IM lesson balances before the close of 2024, though during the last weeks of December, I must admit our calendar looked something like this:
With the arrival of 2025, the old InstantMandarin is no more. Now when you visit the IM site, this is the sad result:
页面找不到了
yèmiàn zhǎo bù dàole.
Translation: “Page not found.”
🙁
…. language learners reacted strongly …
浴火重生 | Rising from the ashes
别哭了，小朋友! It would seem that salvation is at hand. InstantMandarin is slowly and surely being reborn. I’m happy to report that InstantMandarin’s best teachers will continue teaching, and things will be much as they were before.
Many of you know FangFang Guo as a beloved teacher among the IM teaching staff. FangFang was also the manager for the Instant Mandarin teachers. Ms. Guo has been working hard to make the old teachers available to families who want to continue taking IM-like lessons.
According to FangFang, InstantMadarin’s former teachers will continue to be able to use the old InstantMandarin teaching materials. This is terrific news. I thought the InstantMandarin “Storybook” course that Sam went through way back in 2020 was great, and in recent months InstantMandarin had added many colorful picture books, videos, and other “friendly” content to engage younger learners like Thomas小方糖。
How to book lessons with FangFang’s new school
I’ve now scheduled 11 lessons with FangFang’s new school. It’s open for business, but FangFang is still working to iron out some wrinkles. Classes can be booked and teachers are teaching, but for now it’s a bit of work versus the streamlined systems of the old InstantMandarin.com. Here’s the step-by-step for how things are working for now:
- Understand the costs. Lessons are priced similarly to how they were priced when InstantMandarin was active. Here’s the pricing chart for children:
| Number of classes | Cost (USD) | Class duration |
| 10 | $120 | 30 minutes |
| 20 | $220 | 30 minutes |
| 30 | $320 | 30 minutes |
Pricing for adults is a little cheaper:
| Number of classes | Cost(USD) | Class duration |
| 10 | $100 | 30 minutes |
| 20 | $190 | 30 minutes |
| 30 | $280 | 30 minutes |
- Contact FangFang to book classes. If you want to book lessons, make contact with FangFang Guo. I am not going to put FangFang’s contact information on a public webpage, where it would quickly be scraped by spammers and scammers. Please contact me if you would like to book classes, and I will put you in contact with FangFang. Obligatory disclosure: I am getting zero referral fees or kickbacks of any sort from this work. My only interests here are paying full price just like you and continuing to have my kids take Chinese lessons.
- Pay FangFang for a lesson package. For now, paying for lessons with this new school may be harder than you would imagine. FangFang accepts Alipay, WeChat Pay, and Western Union.
In theory Alipay should be the most convenient and affordable option for customers in America, Canada, and other Western countries. Since May of 2023, it has been possible for Westerners with Western-issued credit cards to pay with Alipay, using their credit card as a funding source. However, in a continuing point of confusion, a minority of Chinese Alipay accounts cannot accept payments backed by a Western credit cards. I noticed this when I traveled all over China with 方平山 and Thomas小方糖 in Summer 2023 and Summer 2024. About 95% of merchants and individuals could be easily paid with my international Alipay account, which was funded by an American credit card. The remaining 5% of merchants and individuals had Alipay accounts that would not accept payments made from my Alipay account.
There was no discernable pattern behind these refusals. It had nothing to do with whether a business was small or large, whether it was attached to government or not, or even whether the payee was a business or an individual. I speculate the refusal may relate to the bank the merchant or individual was using for the checking or savings account that underlied their Alipay account, but that is just a guess. If someone knows authoritatively what the source of this problem is, please leave a comment and advise us.
Two nights ago I tried to transfer $960 USD (7039 RMB) to FangFang via Alipay. This did not work. Alipay indicated her account could not accept international payments from my account. I ultimately solved the problem by sending $960 via Alipay to a friend in China, who passed along the money to FangFang via Alipay without a problem. This may not be an option for many of you, so for the time being you may need to use Western Union or another payment mechanism to transfer money to FangFang.
I want to see FangFang succeed and thrive in her work offering language lessons to the community, and I will be working with her to try to sort out these payment issues and get her set up with an Alipay account that accepts Western-sourced payments seamlessly. We are also looking into the possibility of using wise.com for money transfers, which I have used in the past to sent large amounts of money to China with minimal and transparent fees. - Download and install the Neukol scheduling and lesson software from https://neukol.com. This will provide you a way to see scheduled lessons, and to attend class. However, for now, it does not allow you a way to actually schedule the lessons yourself. For now you must contact FangFang to arrange the lessons and she will place them into the schedule. After your lessons are successfully placed, it will look something like this:
5. Understand the new rules. Lessons in FangFang’s new school can be canceled with 24 hours notice. This isn’t nearly so generous as IM’s former 3-hour cancellation policy, but it is in-line with the policies of most other online schools that teach Mandarin Chinese.
This morning Thomas小方糖 had a lesson with his former Instant Mandarin teacher, and it was just like old times, with the same teachers, the same format, the same teaching materials …
… and the very same foolishness from Thomas小方糖. Hey, at least he’s speaking Mandarin! What’s old is new again. We’ll be doing these new classes each and every day. All the best to FangFang Guo and the rest of the former InstantMandarin crew in their new enterprise！ 加油！
(Non) disclosures on referrals and kickbacks
The integrity of my reviews and recommendations on tigerba.com matter to me. I have not been approached by InstantMandarin or its successors to write this article, nor have I been compensated in any way in advance of its publication. Fang Fang Guo / InstantMandarin will not be paying me or compensating me for any lessons you might book with the new school described in this article. I would like to see FangFang’s new school succeed, and that’s because I want to continue to be able to take lessons from its teachers. FangFang Guo is a friend.
Some people attempt to make a low-level business shilling various online education programs. As a website owner, you can earn referral bonuses from companies by steering readers to buy stuff. The availability of these referral bonuses is one reason that there are so many short, superficial reviews of language learning apps online — there is some money to be made. As far as I know there are no referral links in the article above.
There are referral links elsewhere on tigerba.com. Any money I make from referrals will go to pay the many bills for this website. To date I have spent thousands of dollars setting up this website, buying future-looking website plug-ins, and paying for website hosting. At present, tigerba.com is a money-losing enterprise and I’m perfectly happy with that. But tigermama虎妈 tells me it would be a nice thing to offset a few of its costs.
Disclosures on AI and plagiarism
I like the process of writing in the old-fashioned way and don’t presently use any form of AI to write my articles.
From time to time I’ve heard accusations of alleged plagiarism between competitor language learning blogs. I’ve solved that potential problem by generally not reading other language learning blogs.
Avoiding other people’s writing about Chinese language learning helps me to keep my writing, my coverage, and my perspective fresh. I can write freely without worrying that I may have inadvertently borrowed someone else’s ideas, language, priorities, coverage, or point of view.
