Looking for Help with Content for a Chinese Site

I’m working on a Chinese-learning website focused on HSK content (currently through HSK 3). It’s a hobby project I’ve been building as I have time, and the site is free.

I’m looking for a Chinese speaker to help review and polish some of the content—especially to catch mistakes and help make the questions more natural and tailored to the lesson.

I’m currently not making money from the site (it currently earns under $5 a month from ads which doesn't cover hosting). So while I'm somewhat limited on how much I want to spend at this point, I’m open to discussing payment for the work on a project-by-project basis, and if the site does earn more ad revenue I'm going to reinvest that into the site, so there could be additional opportunities later.

So to reiterate, I’m looking for someone to help curate content for an online course. Your help would directly benefit students going through the HSK course and I’d be happy to credit you in addition to any payments we agree on for the work. It's probably easiest if you are in the US for timezones and payment logistics.

Site: https://learnchinese.ai

Note about AI: the site uses some AI-assisted content, but I’m careful about how it’s used. The course is primarily from the hsk textbook and workbooks, and I treat AI content with caution. It's a first draft that needs human review. I’m looking for someone who’s okay with that approach to AI.

If this sounds interesting to you, please message me for more information.

Probably the wrong place to look, but I'll leave it up in case anyone runs across it and has some interest.

Hmm... it's a bit like a textbook, but with the usual "four completely different words" appraoch of many apps.  I'm unable to commit to this, but it's definitely got potential.  I took a quick look at "Lesson 4: She always smiles when talking to customers Activity 4: Reader Text 1".

Quote

那个 又 高 又 漂亮 的 女孩子 是 二 年级 的 。

This, while grammatical, feels weird (calling a girl in grade 2 漂亮).  I realize grammar and vocabulary is super-limited when teaching at this level, so I'm not sure if this fixable.

I'm uncertain about the pronunciation of 饿 (the pinyin è is correct, but the audio sounds like more like someone moaning "eh").

(PS. Do you know you can use images from e.g. https://www.pexels.com/ royalty-free?  It's often faster to search for human-generated images there, than to get an AI to generate them.)

Hi Becky, thanks for the response. I'll respond to a few of your comments. I appreciate your taking the time to look.

The text you mentioned is from the HSK textbook, which is where I got almost all of the content for the course from. I agree it might not be the most natural since it's somewhat old fashioned. I suspect the new HSK 3.0 books will be more modern. I agree calling someone else's daughter 漂亮 is weird.



Images: I actually just use the images from the textbook. But run them through AI to "enhance" them so they are a little clearer. I occasionally change the images but only if there is a good reason. I did look into using stock images instead of AI, but for the most part, I'm just sticking with what the existing textbook uses because it can be hard to find good stock images. Replacing all the images from the textbook with stock images in definitely an option but for the most part, I'm trusting the authors of the HSK course.

Audio: The audio is AI generated, and I also noticed that the audio for 饿 is really awful. There are a few other words that sound bad, but that was one of the worst ones.. It sounds like a dying robot. I think the audio for the full sentences are generally pretty decent. I agree there is plenty of room for improving the audio, but it hasn't been a priority yet.

What I'm really interested in improving right now, is the questions that show up after a text reader activity, or grammar activity. 

For example: here is what I have for the questions for the text you mentioned right now. For the most part they seem fine to me, but the questions are AI generated and I'm not confident that I know the language well enough to evaluate the good from the bad. In this case i think question 3 and 4 are kind of redundant, and I'm not confident about question 3 overall. 
 

Overall, I'm not going for perfect, just incremental improvements.

On 2/3/2026 at 3:24 AM, qubitspace said:

Images: I actually just use the images from the textbook. But run them through AI to "enhance" them so they are a little clearer. I occasionally change the images but only if there is a good reason. I did look into using stock images instead of AI, but for the most part, I'm just sticking with what the existing textbook uses because it can be hard to find good stock images.

Do you have the rights to use those images? By this I mean: someone, a photographer who trained & practiced in making good pictures, made those images and the textbook publisher paid that artist for the right to publish the images in the textbook. If you want to use those images the artist made, you need to ask the artist for permission and they will probably ask for payment in exchange. Even if you're not (yet) making money, you can't use images on your own website without permission.

You can also not just throw images into a generative AI program without the creator's permission. That's basically throwing their work into the plagiarism machine, people tend not to like that.

The rights process can be complicated, which is why many people in your position like using stock images: much easier to arrange the rights to use them.

I'm not saying this to berate you but to inform you.

Hi Lu, 

Overall, I agree with your points.

[devil's advocate] I'm not going to claim I know the legality (like you said it's complicated), but here are some considerations that led me to include the images originally. Transforming textbooks/workbook into an online presentation using generative AI (including AI imagery derived from the source material) is a service that google offers. It's not legal just because Google does it, and it's not the exact same situation, but it's an example of similar usage. I know it's not just a free-for-all because it's educational, but being educational is part of the equation of if it's fair use or not. Being for-profit or non-profit is also a factor, I haven't made this a non-profit officially, but it's something I will probably do as I'm not doing this for money and just want it to be sustainable. So that would also be a factor. Again, I'm not saying it's fair use because it's education and no money is being made (even non-profits can have revenue), but these are some factors.
Some info about the google tool: https://learnyourway.withgoogle.com/ , https://ar5iv.labs.arxiv.org/html/2509.13348

However, I don't want to be unethical or be in a legal gray area, so I'll switch to stock images when I have time. That should alleviate any concerns about copyright infringement and respect the photographer's work.

By 'the rights process can be complicated' I mean that it can be a hassle to figure out who has the rights, how to contact them, what the contract should include... things like that. The process is complicated. The rights situation is not that complicated: you can't use someone else's work in your own publication without their permission. Not even if you'd be an educational non-profit, and also not just because Google facilitates it.

It's reassuring to hear you'll switch to stock images. Good luck on your site!

Thanks. I appreciate your calling me out for this. I'm going to switch to stock images for the reasons I said above. 

I think it actually is complicated though, there are lots of situations where you can legally (and ethically) use images without permission. Simplifying it by saying you should always get permission might be a safe approach but it's definitely not how copyright laws work.