I have introduced Ximalaya ( in Chinese: 喜马拉雅）, a Chinese podcast in my other post. It is one of the largest online audio platforms in China, with an average of 268 million monthly active users across all scenes in 2021, and many audios have been listened for more than a million or even a billion times.
It brings together hundreds of millions of audios such as stories, novels, books, children’s stories, courses, lectures, etc. It is not only very resourceful but many of the resources are free. It is a great immersion listening platform for both children and adults learning Chinese.
Now I will introduce step-by-step how to listen to audios on Ximalaya.
Table of contents
| 1. How to access Ximalaya; 2. How to find a channel; 3. How to search for audio; 4. How to play an audio; 5. More features on Ximalaya App |
1. How to access Ximalaya
When you search for Ximalaya, you may also see Himalaya. Himalaya is the international version of Ximalaya. The international version is developed by Ximalaya for overseas users. The resources on Himalaya are not as rich as the local Chinese version of Ximalaya. Especially for children and Chinese learners, the Chinese version has more content to listen to.
You may find that there is no Ximalaya App in the App store if you are located outside China, instead, the Himalaya version will show up. Although you are not able to download the Chinese version of Ximalaya App outside China, you can use your phone, tablet, or computer to open your browser and type in http://www.ximalaya.com then press the “Enter”, you will be able to directly access the platform.
2. How to find a channel
Click the “channel/频道“ button (see the red label on image-1) it will redirect you to the page of “all channels/全部频道” (image-2).
3. How to search for an audio
There are two ways to search for audios, 1) searching by channel and, 2) searching by search bar.
1) Searching by channel. On the “all channels/全部频道” page (image-2), you can see that all the channels are listed on it. Click on the name of the channel you want to listen to, and it will take you to the whole programs page of the channel.
Taking the children’s channel as an example, click on the “children/儿童” label (image-3), and it will redirect you to the whole children’s programs page (image-4).
Explore the whole children’s program page under “Children/儿童”. You can see all the children’s programs are listed by categories (image-4). From children’s stories, songs through famous books, science and encyclopedia, and fantasy adventures, etc. From parenting classes, historical stories through celebrities’ biographies, and more.
Click on the label (a program category, image-4) that you would like to listen to, and scroll down the page, it shows you all the programs by images that are under the category you choose.
At the bottom of the page, you can click on the page numbers for more content (image-5).
2) Searching by search bar.
On top of the page, there is the search bar, you can search for audio directly here (image-6). But since it is a Chinese website, for most of the content you will need to type in Chinese, however, for some well-known stories or songs, etc, you can search in English directly.
4. How to play an audio
It is easy to play audio, just click on the play icon on the image of the audio you want to listen to, and it will play right away (see image-7 as an example).
At the bottom of the page, there is a play bar that shows the audio you are playing (image-8) now.
You can adjust the speed by clicking on “x1.0” (image-9)
Click on “playlist” (image-10), and you can see all the episode names on the left column of the list (image-11).
If you want to share audio with other people, click on the “share” icon (image-12);
Click on “展开获取声音链接ⅴ/expand to get the audio link ⅴ” (image-13);
Click on the “复制/copy” button (image-14), and you will get the link and can share it with others.
The above content explained how you can listen to audio on Ximalaya’s official website. You do not need to download anything or sign up as a user, simply access to Ximalaya website(www.ximalaya.com ) and choose the audio you want to listen to (but it has to be free resources), and you will be able to listen to it right away.
5. More features on Ximalaya App
If you want to explore more features of Ximalaya podcast, you would need to sign up as a Chinese user and then access the Chinese App store to download it. For Android users, you can access the official website of Ximalaya to get the download link by clicking “立即下载/download now”.
Once you have Ximalaya App, you will be able to use the below key features. Taking my cell phone as an example, you can:
Set a timer (Sleep Mode):
On the play bar, click the “sleep mode” icon (image-15), it will take you to the list of sleep mode (image-16). You can choose the time that you want the audio to stop by clicking on the corresponding button.
Add to favorites:
If you want to add episodes to your favorites list, you would need to sign up as a free user.
Click on the tab “我的/my” at the bottom right of the main page（image-17), then click on the cat icon (image-18) to access the signing up page.
On the signing up page, click on the drop-down arrow next to the code (image-19) to choose the corresponding country code of your location (image-20).
After selecting the country code, input your phone number (image-19), accept the terms and conditions by clicking on the circle, then click on the “获取验证码/get verification code” button.
After clicking on the “获取验证码/get verification code” button, it will take you to the next page which is for security verification. Drag the green slider to make the puzzle fit together (image-21). Then it will jump to the “input verification code” page. After inputting the 6-digits code you have received via your phone (image-22), your registration as a free user is complete.
If you use an Apple device, you can skip the above sign-up process by simply logging in Ximalaya App via Apple ID by clicking the “通过Apple登录/login via Apple” button (image-23).
Once you become a Ximalaya user, you will be able to add your favorite audios to your favorites list by clicking on the star icon (image-24)
Audios with scripts:
Not every audio here has a script, but many original audios have their scripts available. When you are playing audio, the words being read will be dynamically displayed on the “声音” (“sound”) page with highlighted color (image-25).
The above features are those that I use frequently. I hope this step-by-step guide could help you listen to more great resources in Chinese, and hope you could benefit from the Chinese language environment and improve your Chinese language skills.
