Hi, my name is William Hoppes and I’m the founder and owner of Rulin Mandarin. Back in 2019, I was reading through Rulin Waishi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rulin_waishi), in case you were wondering where the name came from, and noticed a real paucity of good online materials for the HSK test. Since I’d done plenty of studying for the HSK, I figured I could fix that in a hurry, which I did. But as I got feedback from readers, I noticed a lot of other tests which didn’t really have much online support, like the YCT and TOCFL, and so I started branching out into those.

I’ve posted a lot of free stuff on this website and I hope you enjoy it and if you’re really serious about learning Chinese, let’s talk about tutors. Why a tutor and why a tutor from Rulin Mandarin? Well, you need a tutor because Chinese is tough. Really tough. I’ve seen way, way too many foreigners who have been diligently studying Chinese for two to three years with very little to show for it. You want a tutor who can identify what you’re struggling with and help you through the most difficult parts because they’ve helped dozens of other students with similar problems before. Tutors can be the difference between mastering Chinese and burning out after three years. I’ve been where you are, I’ve seen friends burn out, and I don’t want that for you.

As for our tutors, I like working towards a test like the HSK or the TOCFL because I want the structure, the recognition, and the rewards. Having a certificate of fluency isn’t just a way to track your own progress, it’s proof to employers and teachers that you have the skills you’ve worked so hard to develop. And the scholarships don’t hurt either. But it’s really hard to find tutors who can specialize, or even know much about these exams. There’s just too many prospective students for a teach to find the few thousand who really want to pass the TOCFL or BCT, so most tutors are generalists out of necessity. Rulin Mandarin turned out to be a great solution to this problem by bringing students and teachers together. If you want to learn about the TOCFL or YCT for example, you’re going to come to Rulin Mandarin eventually because we’ve got the best free tools and resources. That lets me approach tutors with a small but passionate group of customers who really want to learn the YCT or the TOCFL or the HSK or even some of the more obscure tests like the HSKK or MCT. That meant, for the first time, a tutor really could spend all their time teaching and specializing in one single test, learning everything about it. And the rest, as someone once said, is history.