Hello fellow Japanese learner! I have been studying japanese for the past 5-6 years, and i have taken japanese classes up to 3rd year university level, and from my experience, typically after learning hiragana, you are expected to learn katakana. Since you already know some Kanji from your Chinese experience, you may be tempted to skip the katakana step, however i would advise against that because katakana is still something you could probably learn in about a week, and is very widely used in the language from borrowed words to onomatopoeia, etc. You have picked a really fun but challenging language to begin learning!! Good luck!!