Don’t studyChinese hard.Decode it smart.
Radically is a cozy discovery game that transforms Chinese learningfrom “learn one, forget one”to “learn 1, unlock 10.”
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Why Radically?
Because the human brain is built to make sense—not to store thousands of isolated symbols.
Learning Chinese should not be reduced to copying characters, flipping flashcards, or relying on spaced repetition to review what you are about to forget.
Memory-first methods can help you remember individual characters.
Radically shows you how to see.
In our viewers’ own words:
Here is the fundamental problem with whole-character memorization.
When things do not make sense to us, learning falls back on brute-force memorization. It feels like filling a leaky bucket.
So what if the problem is not your memory?
Or… not even memorization itself?
What if you were never taught to see Chinese the way it actually is?
Unlike alphabetic languages that encode sound through letters, Chinese is a visual-semantic writing system built from ancient visual abstractions of the real world.
So the answer is not more repetition. Nor more visual tricks. It is learning to decode the visual-semantic system itself.
What is Radically?
A cozy discovery game powered by 300 interconnected roots.
Radically helps learners unlock 3,000 Chinese characters, build real reading and writing proficiency, and gain greater listening clarity.
Who is Radically designed for?
For anyone who refuses to memorize by rote.
For anyone who refuses to reduce language learning to memorizing vocabulary lists. For anyone who believes that, in the age of AI, storing isolated facts is becoming a job for automation—not the best use of human intelligence.
Just as every tree begins with roots, every Chinese learner begins with the same visual-semantic foundation: the radicals.
Through high-frequency Discovery Challenges, learners apply roots they already understand to decode useful complex characters they can use immediately.
Through Low-Hanging Fruit, previously learned components unlock additional characters with less effort.
Whether you are discovering your first character, preparing for AP Chinese, reconnecting with your heritage, or simply fascinated by the language, everyone begins by building the same foundation.
Learn at your own pace. Go as far as your goals take you.
One system. Your own journey.
The story behind the system
Twelve years of research. One summer to bring it to life.
The research behind Radically began twelve years ago, when I started teaching Chinese at home as a mother trying to keep my children’s heritage language alive in the United States.
I wanted Chinese to feel alive, meaningful, and connected to their lives—not like a Sunday-school burden they had to endure.
In 2019, that work took shape as an iF Design Award-winning educational concept and later became the heart of my TEDx talk, How to Learn Chinese in the 21st Century.
Since then, the Total Radical System™ has lived in classrooms and high-school curricula. It has been tested with hundreds of learners around the world, from age five to seventy-five.
It helped me coach two national champions in the U.S. National Chinese Speech Contest, which brought together participants from 29 states in 2023 and 2024.
In 2027, the methodology will be introduced through a 24-episode Great Courses series, following a pilot course rated 4.9 out of 5 by viewers.
Over time, Radically grew into a complete Chinese language structure: thousands of connected characters, roots, and meaning pathways organized across Chinese civilization and brought to life through hundreds of original hand-painted watercolor illustrations.
But much of that world still lived in notebooks, lesson plans, and fat Excel tables.
Then, this summer, Radically became real.
I began building the MVP with two local students from a first-place University of Arkansas HogHacks-winning team. Now they are heading to Purdue University’s computer science department—one to study artificial intelligence and the other data science.
Together, we transformed my analog system into a real, playable MVP powered by a graph-based discovery engine.
“I always wanted to learn Chinese, but I didn’t know how to start.”
Koree
“I believe Radically can help thousands of Chinese American kids like myself enjoy their heritage language.”
Jonathan
For twelve years, the system had been researched, organized, taught, and tested.
In one summer, a new generation helped bring it to life.