2024 has been a crazy year for my Chinese journey and other aspects of my life. I started this blog, I finished reading 天官赐福 in Chinese, and I finally feel that I’ve reached a comfortable spot in my Chinese journey.

In this post, I’ll talk about my blogging journey, things I’ve learnt from it, where my Chinese is, and some of my favourite media of the year.

Not only is this post for me to recap in the future but also, I hope, as an inspiration for you. I know you all love reading journey posts, so here goes…

Contents

The Cozy Study Blog

I started putting together The Cozy Study at the end of 2023 and released it to the public in December 2024.

Sharing my experience with others through this blog has been a fun and insightful journey. I’ve gained much knowledge and experience with blogging during these 12 months.

The Challenges

I’m not a great writer by any means; in fact, English writing is something that I struggled a lot with during school. So, writing blog posts that are engaging, informative, and read well was definitely a challenge. I also want my blog post to reflect a bit of me, so finding that balance between being informative and giving suggestions and opinions is not an easy task!

Besides writing, there’s also the technical and analytical side of running a website. Google Analytics is a whole mystery of its own, and I’m still struggling to find the information I need to help me understand my audience.

Without a doubt, regularly posting content is a huge challenge. When I first started, I aimed for at least a blog post once a week, but that has not worked out. It’s a struggle, and this is due to a lack of inspiration, time, and the ability to express what I want — sometimes, I just can’t put what I want to say into words. I hope this will improve with experience!

Blog Stats (2024)

Pageviews: 20,000 (from 1st Jan 2024 to 31st Dec 2024)

Top Countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Russia, China, Germany, Singapore, Brazil, France

Top Pages

The Future of The Cozy Study

At this moment, I don’t have any big plans. I want to continue with what I’m doing right now, which is providing informative guidance to Chinese learners through guides and media reviews.

The media reviews are fun for me to write because they allow me to look back on how I felt about the content I consumed and enable learners to find media that are suitable for them (from both an entertainment and learning perspective).

Currently, everything on The Cozy Study is about reading and listening, and there is nothing related to writing or speaking. At the moment, I don’t plan to expand to these areas as they’re not areas that I focus on, so I don’t feel comfortable providing information and guidance in these areas.

Given that life is ever-changing, this blog will also naturally change over time with what I’m doing and what’s happening in the language and Chinese media space. So, I’m very excited to see where this blog will be in 12 months time.

Chinese Journey

This journey started in May 2020, so it has been almost 5 years.

In these 5 years, I have consistently read books and watched TV shows. Some will assume I’m completely “fluent” in the language and I can do anything I want with it.

That is somewhat true, I can watch TV shows without English subtitles and read any book I want with the help of a dictionary.

But there is much more to a language than TV shows and books!

5 years later…

After 5 years of this Chinese journey, doing anything in Chinese, whether watching a TV show, reading a book or playing a game in Chinese, still requires some level of focus and processing power. Each task requires a different level of focus.

Reading and playing games require the most focus compared to watching TV shows. I can feel myself actively focusing my energy when reading Chinese — it’s like I’m saying to myself, “Oh, Chinese text, let me push away everything else and focus on this text”.

When I play games in English, I can comprehend the UI and small notification text without actively pausing what I’m doing to read it. However, it’s not like that at all with Chinese. I need to pause and read in my head (sound the words out) before I can comprehend it.

This inability to “look and comprehend” slows me down, particularly when playing Chinese games. With each new game, I need to pause and spend a few minutes on the UI to “read all the parts of the UI”, which I do not need to do when playing in English.

Given the amount of content I’ve consumed, and how consistent I’ve been with it, I had expected that it would become a subconscious activity by now, but that’s not the case. There are still many moments where I stumble on some familiar and common words. It simply takes my brain far longer than expected to form a solid subconscious memory of words and phrases.

The Future

Of course, without a doubt, I will carry on with what I’m already doing, which is reading books and watching TV shows.

I have been saying for years that I will focus on books set in a fictional historical world, but each time, I become demotivated by the difficulty of these types of books and end up pushing that back.

So, let’s hope that 2025 will be the year where I will succeed in the goal of mainly reading fictional historical novels.

Playing games in Chinese is an area I started to dip my toes into in 2024, and I’m seeing huge benefits from it! It’s definitely helping me to train the “look and comprehend” ability. I can’t wait to really hone this skill further and make gaming in Chinese much more enjoyable!

Chinese Media

Enough of rambling about blogs and Chinese journey, let’s talk about Chinese media that I’ve consumed in 2025!

Favourites Games

I’m going to start with games — an area that is pretty new in my Chinese space.

Infinity Nikki – If you haven’t heard of Infinity Nikki, then you need to get on board! Okay, admittedly, it’s not the game for everyone, however, it’s the most awesome game to play in Chinese! Infinity Nikki is an open-world adventure game with exploration, puzzle solving, jumping challenges, mini games and dressing up. Out of the major big-name free open-world games (i.e. Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail), Infinity Nikki is the easiest in comparison. It’s easiest in terms of gameplay loop and as a game to play in Chinese. There’s less technical jargon compared to the other open-world games, so if you can, play this in Chinese!
Once Again – A comic-style visual novel with some interactive elements. It tells the story of a boy who travels back in time and spends time with a loved one. Once Again is the most accessible visual novel for a Chinese learner — it should be approachable after HSK3 (~approx 1,000 word knowledge).
Shin-Chan: Shiro And The Coal Town – This game has Mandarin and Cantonese voice acting! The Cantonese voices are dubbed by the original Cantonese cast for the show — a totally nostalgic moment for me! I picked this one up as soon as I found that there are Cantonese voices (a very rare find). As a game, it’s relaxing and cozy. You play as Shin Chan, who is staying in the countryside with his family for his father’s project. While staying in the peaceful town, Shin Chan discovers a mysterious train that takes him to Coal Town. The gameplay loop is pretty simple: gather items, fish, farm crops and complete the quest. The story and mysteries of Coal Town will unfold as Shin Chan completes the various quests given to him. The simplicity of Shin-Chan: Shiro And The Coal Town makes this a relaxing game for playing Chinese!

Favourites Dramas

The dramas listed below are dramas that I watched in 2024, and not just shows released in 2024.

《去有风的地方》 Meet Yourself – I rave about this modern slice-of-life show all the time, that is because it’s the best! I love cozy if you haven’t figured it out from the blog name, so a cozy slice-of-life modern TV show is right up my alley! 《去有风的地方》 Meet Yourself follows the story of a city woman as she leaves her job and life in the city behind to find herself again in a rural village. It’s a show all about healing, and it’s also the best show for a Chinese learner!
《一念关山》 A Journey To Love – I have a love-hate relationship with this show! If it weren’t for the ending, this would be, no doubt, my favourite show of the year, but sadly, that ending…really ruined it. 《一念关山》 A Journey To Love has everything that I enjoy in a historical drama: friendship, strong female characters, great music, beautiful costumes, heart-clenching moments, and a great story. Sigh…the ending is a real shame. It’s been months, and I’m still annoyed by it!
《花轿喜事》 Wrong Carriage, Right Groom – This is a remake of a show from 2009, but it’s my first time experiencing this story. Of course, I can’t compare it to the original. I really enjoyed it, but those who have seen the original version don’t like this new version. 《花轿喜事》 Wrong Carriage, Right Groom is a fun and light-hearted historical show with good characters and a great story.
《玫瑰的故事》 The Story of Rose – I didn’t expect to enjoy this drama, but I did! It tells the story of Rose’s development from her 20s to her early 40s. During these 20 years, she experiences three romantic relationships, each changing her perspective on life. I love her “never give up” and “always learning” attitude — which was inspiring to watch.
《少年歌行》 The Blood of Youth – An old show that I finally found time to watch, and I’m glad I did. The special effects and fight scenes were lacking, and some scenes were a little too cheesy for my taste, but nevertheless, I enjoyed the characters and the story. I preferred the second half much more than the first.
《长歌行》 The Long Ballad – Another old show that I finally found time to watch. 《长歌行》 The Long Ballad follows the growth and development of two princesses after a political event that changed their lives forever. It’s one of the slowest shows I’ve ever seen, so slow that I almost gave up! In the end, I didn’t give up and absolutely loved the second half of it.

Favourite Books

I wasn’t as motivated to read books as I had been in previous years, so this list is short.

《吾命骑士》 – I can not believe I didn’t read this series earlier; honestly, it’s the best series of books I’ve read in a long time! My friend told me this is a Western fantasy setting and follows the story of the main character, Sun Knight, and his fellowship of twelve knights, and they all live in a fortress together. That’s all I knew about this series, and boy, was I in for a pleasant surprise. The series is light-hearted (mostly), absolutely hilarious, and has a great plot! If you can get your hands on a copy of this, you MUST READ IT!
《天官赐福》 – The reason I started learning Chinese was because of this book! I attempted to read 《天官赐福》 in Chinese many times but failed due to the difficulty and demotivation of carrying on with it. In 2024, a brand new edition was released, which was the cue I needed to read in Chinese. Re-reading isn’t something that I enjoy, which is obvious in my overall enjoyment of 《天官赐福》, but I still absolutely love this story!
《凤双飞》 – My friends from the Chinese learning Discord have been nagging me to read this for so long, and in October 2024, I finally read it! Absolutely loved it! It tells the funny story of a gambling addict who transmigrates to a historical world and ends up intertwined into various ridiculous events…including a *cough* 3-way relationship.
《藏神于隅》 – I love a good short story that tells a simple but touching story. 《藏神于隅》 is exactly that! It tells the story of the relationship between the last surviving diety and his guardian. It’s only 20k Chinese characters long, so there’s not much to it, but it’s great for a short read!

2024 Round Up – New blog, Chinese journey and favourite media