About Chinese Tips

Chinese Tips (中文通) is a website and Android app for learning Mandarin Chinese for the HSK exams, Levels 1 to 6, in simplified or traditional characters.

What is on the site

• The app: 479 story lessons in 7 story worlds, one for each HSK level and two for Level 6, with dictation, handwriting and reading aloud.
• Mock tests: 100 papers in the HSK 3.0 format, HSK 2 to 6.
• Characters: a page for each of 1,797 characters, with its stroke order.
• Word lists and guides to the levels and the exam.
• For teachers: a link and a QR code for every story lesson and mock paper.

The app is also on Google Play, for Android, age 9 and up. Everything is free for good: every lesson, dictation chapter, write-from-memory chapter, read-aloud passage, all handwriting practice and the mock exams. Where the app shows ads, the full version, bought once, removes them. What costs money: Pricing.

How a lesson runs

Each story lesson opens with a scene in its world. Its new words then go through eight stages: read the pinyin, match, choose the English, find the word in a sentence, build the sentence, fill the gap, explain it in Chinese, and write it from memory. Words and sentences are spoken by the text-to-speech voice of your own browser or phone.

Beside the lessons sit three kinds of chapter. Dictation speaks a word for you to write character by character on a grid, stroke by stroke. Write-from-memory takes a whole sentence away in six or seven steps, until the last is written from memory. The read-aloud passages put pinyin above every character; a line is played when you tap it, and a word shows its meaning.

The story worlds

• HSK 1: Siyuan Teahouse, 28 lessons, a cast of 8 people.
• HSK 2: The Modern Campus & Co-living Residence, 20 lessons, a cast of 8 people.
• HSK 3: The Creative Media Hub & Cultural Park, 42 lessons, a cast of 8 people.
• HSK 4: The Creative District & Modern Commercial Agency, 106 lessons, a cast of 8 people.
• HSK 5: The Metropolitan Innovation Park & Tech Incubator, 133 lessons, a cast of 8 people.
• HSK 6: The Global Biopharmaceutical & Health Sciences Center, 75 lessons, a cast of 8 people.
• HSK 6: The High-End Green Energy & Industrial Automation Hub, 75 lessons, a cast of 8 people.

The levels

The levels are those of HSK 3.0, the standard published as GF 0025-2021, which groups nine levels into three stages. The site covers Levels 1 to 6. The word lists hold the 4,868 words of Levels 2 to 6 in 176 themes, each word with its pinyin, an English meaning and an example sentence.

Where the reference data comes from

Stroke outlines come from the Hanzi Writer project's data, derived from Arphic Technology's KaitiM and UKai fonts under the Arphic Public License. Readings, meanings and radicals come from Make Me a Hanzi (LGPL 3.0), built on the Unicode Unihan database and CJKlib. The mock papers follow the sections, parts, question counts and timings of the official sample papers for Levels 2 to 6, checked in September 2026. No official source publishes a pass mark for HSK 3.0.

Languages

Lessons are shown in simplified or traditional characters. Hints beside the Chinese come in 12 languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), French, German, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Russian, Thai, Korean, Japanese, Chinese (Traditional). The Chinese itself is never translated.

Corrections

To report a wrong reading, meaning, stroke or exam answer, email support@latticelogic.app with the page address, or the level and lesson. The pages and the app are built from one catalogue, so a correction reaches both.

More ways to reach us: Contact.