HorseDragonFish, a Mandarin webcomic

HorseDragonFish (馬龍魚) is a Chinese-language web comic that updates every week.

I’ve had it in my feed-reader for a while now, and it’s good to get some fun reading practice interspersed with my other subscriptions.

It’s aimed at people learning Mandarin, with pinyin transcriptions and translations below each comic (hand-written in traditional characters).

The content tends to be modern and quirky (as in the Angry Birds strip pictured), which is another bonus as this sort of stuff can be hard to find. Normally it’s either dry material in textbooks, or fun stuff out on the Web without any help, so this is a good mix.

I don’t follow it that closely, but each of the characters in the comic are actual hanzi with faces. Apart from the eponymous Chinese zodiac characters, there’s also a ‘Mr Sex’ (色先生) and various others. The whole thing reminds me of Cyanide and Happiness more than anything else.

It’s not written by a native Mandarin speaker, but I’ve never noticed any mistakes (not that I’m an expert or native). It’s certainly worth a look for some interesting reading practice.

Link: HorseDragonFish

Also, quite a funny interview with the guy who writes HorseDragonFish, on Chinese Hacks.