Practical guides for learning to write Chinese — grids, routines, and the HSK standard.
HSK 3.0 replaced the old 6-level system with 9 bands, and the official 2025 exam syllabus re-levels the word lists for testing — HSK 1 now starts at 300 words. What actually changed, and which list you should study from.
Read the guide →Turn any textbook lesson's word list into a printable Chinese practice sheet — Integrated Chinese 4th edition, New Practical Chinese Reader, and YCT — with tone-marked pinyin, Tianzige grids, and stroke-order breakdowns.
Read the guide →The eight rules that determine stroke order in every Chinese character — horizontal before vertical, outside before inside, middle before the two sides — with worked stroke diagrams, the dot and enclosure exceptions, and the common characters that break the rules.
Read the guide →A practical routine for learning to write Chinese characters: watch the stroke order, trace, then write freehand on a printed grid — and where each tool fits in.
Read the guide →田字格 (tianzige) or 米字格 (mige)? How the cross and diagonal guides work, which one beginners should start with, and when to switch to plain squares.
Read the guide →