Character library
9 curated lists. The culture packs come with a written story for every character — where it came from and where it still turns up in Chinese life.
Culture pack
春节年红福 Stories
Spring Festival characters The characters that go on doors, red envelopes and dinner tables across the lunar new year — with the reason each one is there. 20 characters · 2 sheets
鼠牛虎兔龙 Stories
The twelve zodiac animals Twelve animals, twelve years, one repeating cycle — and the character for each one. 12 characters · 2 sheets
茶水叶杯壶 Stories
Tea characters The vocabulary of the one Chinese export that reached almost every language on earth. 15 characters · 2 sheets
中秋月圆团 Stories
Mid-Autumn characters One full moon, one round cake, and a word for reunion that carries the shape of both. 15 characters · 2 sheets
Exam syllabus
Everyday topic
一二三四五
Numbers one to ten Ten characters, twenty-three strokes between them. The fastest useful thing you can learn to write in Chinese. 10 characters · 1 sheets
家人爸妈哥
Who's who in a Chinese family Chinese has no plain word for "brother". It has one for an older brother and a different one for a younger. Here is the map. 20 characters · 2 sheets
Building blocks
一二三人大
Your first 20 characters The twenty simplest, most useful shapes in the language — most of them under five strokes, and almost all of them pictures of what they mean. 20 characters · 2 sheets
日月山水火
Characters that are still pictures Twenty-four characters that have not stopped looking like the thing they mean, three thousand years on. 24 characters · 3 sheets