Ink Brush Chinese

Learn Chinese the way you would if you lived there: inside a story, with people you get to know.

Mark and Anna are new students in Beijing. Chapter by chapter you follow them and their friends — a first hello, a birthday, an exam, a day on the Great Wall — and you learn what they learn: to read it, to hear it, and to write every word by hand.

A STORY YOU READ AND HEAR
• 124 chapters across HSK 1 to HSK 5, each one conversation about one thing
• Every line said in its speaker's own voice, typed out word by word as it is said
• Tap any word for its reading and meaning; show or hide pinyin and English
• Play a part yourself: the story calls you by the name and country you pick

WRITE EVERY CHARACTER
• Watch it written, trace it, then write it from memory
• Every stroke is checked as your finger draws it: its place, its direction, its shape
• Characters in the colour of their tone, so the tone is learned with the shape
• Brush, pen or marker, with or without the grid

FIVE SMALL STEPS TO A CHAPTER
• Prestudy: meet the words on cards — sound, meaning, what each is built from
• Story: read and hear them used
• Hanzi and Write: write the new characters, then the words
• Practice: a short quiz on the whole chapter
You never wonder what to do next: one button on Home carries on where you stopped.

NEVER FORGET A WORD YOU LEARN
• Spaced repetition brings each word back just before you would forget it
• Asked a new way each time: its meaning, its sound, then written from memory
• Six skills to practise: writing, listening, meaning, tones, sentences, grammar
• Weak spots: the characters your hand keeps getting wrong

EVERYTHING TO LOOK UP
• Every word of the new HSK, levels 1 to 7–9: 10,900 words and 3,000 characters
• A dictionary of 100,000 more words, searched by character, pinyin or English
• Every grammar note the courses teach, each on a line of the story
• For any character: stroke order, its parts, its radical and how it has been written since the oracle bones

START FROM ZERO
• Pinyin and tones, with every syllable recorded and an ear trainer
• The 36 basic strokes and the eight rules of stroke order
• All 214 radicals

MADE TO BE PLEASANT
• Every person and place is drawn for the app; nothing is stock
• Light and dark themes, iPhone and iPad
• Simplified or traditional characters, pinyin or zhuyin
• Works offline: every word, stroke and recording is inside the app
• No account, no ads, no tracking — the app collects nothing

PAY ONCE, KEEP IT ALL
Free for good: pinyin and tones, basic strokes, stroke order and radicals; the whole Library and its dictionary; review and practice; and the first unit of HSK 1.

One purchase — not a subscription — opens every other chapter of every course, and every HSK level's words and characters to write, with whatever later updates add.

Ink Brush Chinese follows the published HSK word lists and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the HSK's examining authority.