Introducing duiduidui!

Hello! My name is Benji Smith, and I'm the founder of duiduidui!

I'm married to the remarkable artist and musician Emily Lau, who was born and raised in Hong Kong. In the sixteen years we've been together, I've been fortunate to travel to China with her at least a dozen times.

We've spent time in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Foshan, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Chongqing, Wuhan, Lijiang, Xi'an, Macau, and lots of smaller places in between. Everywhere we go, we meet new people! Modernist portrait painters with studios in the Beijing 798 Art Zone... Tea farmers in the Dragon Well plantations... Boutique hotel keepers in the mountains of Yunnan Province... Ladies selling jade jewelry from stalls on the streets of Foshan.

We sit and drink tea, eat spectacular meals, and chat with people about their lives.

For the longest time, Emily had to translate everything for me. Even secondhand, those conversations were wonderful. But never being able to listen directly to people's stories always left me feeling like I was missing something.

So, I started studying Chinese for myself.

I have a teacher in Wuhan who I meet with online twice a week (and a few years ago, we went and visited her in person!). She has a curriculum, and she teaches me vocabulary and grammar. But mostly, we just chat, so that I can practice listening and speaking.

Early in our lessons, I noticed how much friction there was in my study process. Between lessons, it was hard to organize my study materials. I tried making my own flashcards from scratch (with actual index cards!) and I tried lots of different apps. But I never found anything that worked well for me.

So, over the last few years, I've been building the tool I wished existed: an app that could keep up with my lessons, my travels, and my curiosity. That's a story of its own, and I tell it in my next post. The short version: that tool became duiduidui!, and it's the app I now use every day between lessons.

The name is borrowed from those conversations I fell in love with. 对 (duì) means "correct," and 对对对 (duì duì duì) is what you hear when someone leans in and agrees with you: yes, yes, exactly! If you spend any time in conversation with Chinese people, you'll hear it a hundred times a day. It's one of the handiest expressions you can learn, and it's the spirit I want the app to have.

Enthusiastic agreement, all day long!

I hope duiduidui! helps more people in the English-speaking world learn Chinese, so they can spend more time engaging with the people, the culture, the flavors, and the history of China. And maybe, someday, sit down over tea and hear those stories firsthand.