Any level — reading and handwriting 23 steps 8 weeks at 20 min/day

Characters from Zero — stop memorising, start reading

Characters are not thousands of unrelated pictures. They are a few hundred parts, recombined.

What you can do at the end

Break an unfamiliar character into its parts, guess its meaning and often its sound, and write 100+ characters by hand.

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Character Reader — complete

Break an unfamiliar character into its parts, guess its meaning and often its sound, and write 100+ characters by hand.

Pick your next path

Week 1 — how the system works

Ten minutes of theory that changes everything after it.

How many characters do you need?
The honest answer, and why it is far fewer than people say.
Character etymology
Where the shapes came from. Once you see it, characters stop being arbitrary.
How to write Chinese characters
The eight basic strokes and the stroke-order rules that govern all of them.
Simplified vs Traditional
Which one to learn, and why the answer is usually obvious from your goal.

Weeks 2–4 — the components

This is the actual shortcut.

The radicals hub
All 100, ordered by stroke count, each with its own page.
Learn the fifteen high-frequency radicals
人 口 氵 讠 艹 木 女 心 手 日 月 钅 纟 辶 宀 — the starred ones on the hub.
Water — 氵
The most reliable meaning clue in the language. Start here.
Speech — 讠
说, 话, 请, 谢, 课. If it has 讠, it involves language.
Heart — 忄
Every emotion word in Chinese carries this on its left.
Hand — 扌
打, 找, 拉, 推. Things you do with your hands.
Radical Hunt
Find the radical inside the character — including when it is buried two levels down.
Character Radical Quiz
Which radical does this character use? Multiple-choice rounds.

Weeks 4–6 — handwriting

Writing by hand is what makes recognition stick.

Stroke Order Animator
Type any character, watch it written. Use it for every new character.
Character Writing Practice
Trace on screen with stroke-by-stroke feedback.
Printable 田字格 sheets
Generate grid paper for any character set and write them out.
Character Builder
Assemble characters from their parts — the reverse of decomposition.
Handwriting vs printed fonts
Why 你 looks different in a textbook and in someone's notes.

Weeks 6–8 — reading for real

Apply it to text you have not seen.

The 100 most common characters
These 100 cover a large share of everything written in Chinese.
Look-Alike Characters
土/士, 己/已, 未/末. Train the difference before it costs you an exam mark.
Characters with multiple pronunciations
了, 行, 长, 还. The trap nobody warns beginners about.
Read HSK 2 stories without pinyin
Toggle the pinyin off. This is the moment you find out what you actually know.
Pinyin Annotator
Paste anything you want to read and get pinyin above every word.
HSK Level Analyzer
Paste real Chinese and see exactly which characters you are missing.

Or take a different route

Absolute beginner → HSK 1

Chinese from Zero

31 steps · 10–12 weeks at 20–30 min/day You have never studied Chinese. Start here and do these thirty things in this order.
Some pinyin already → HSK 1 pass

Pass HSK 1

23 steps · 6–8 weeks at 30 min/day You can read pinyin and know a few words. This is what is left between you and the certificate.
HSK 1 → HSK 2 pass

Pass HSK 2

22 steps · 8–10 weeks at 30 min/day You have HSK 1. This is exactly what HSK 2 adds — and nothing that it doesn't.

Not sure this is the right path?

Take the 5-question placement quiz — it recommends a path and a starting HSK level in about a minute. Or browse everything at once in the Pinyin Learning Center.