The Summer 2026 Update: Literate Chinese Is a Different App Now

大家好！ Ray here.

Literate Chinese just got its biggest overhaul since launch. The app now recommends stories matched to the words you know, connects your flashcards back to the stories you saved them from, and teaches grammar and handwriting alongside reading. If you haven’t opened it in a while, it’s a different app.

I built this app to help me on my lifelong quest to become literate in Chinese, and I’m making it the most useful app for doing that. As an ABC (or ABT), I know the gap firsthand — between speaking and reading, and between intermediate and actually literate. I hope this helps all of us get there. Here’s what’s new.

Stories picked at exactly your level

Every story in the library is now scored against your personal vocabulary — the words you’ve studied, saved, and read. The Practice tab surfaces the ones in your comprehensible-input sweet spot, so you’re always reading something you can actually finish that still teaches you something new. Finish a story and the next one in the series is queued up for you.

This is the heart of the reading-practice method: input you mostly understand, at volume, every day.

Your flashcards remember where you met them

Save a word while reading and its flashcard keeps the exact sentence it came from, with a link back to the story. Context is how words stick — now it travels with every card.

Writing practice: write it, and it sticks

Trace any character stroke by stroke, in the correct order, right from its flashcard. I added this for myself — and then used it to teach my son to write his own name, 鮑彤. Watching him write it for the first time was the best thing this app has ever done for me.

Grammar, built into Practice

173 grammar points across 5 levels now live in the app — from your first 吗 question to advanced patterns — each with clear explanations and example sentences. Tap the graduation cap at the top of the Practice tab. (Prefer to browse on the web? The full guide is at Chinese Grammar.)

For Taiwan-style learners: it reads like a real book now

Zhuyin (bopomofo) now stands in a vertical column beside each character — print-style tone marks and all — exactly like the readers kids grow up with in Taiwan. It works across stories, flashcards, and quizzes. New to zhuyin? Start with our zhuyin guide.

And a question every heritage learner and Taiwan-focused student asks constantly: is this word actually used here? Tap ✨ on any word and the AI tells you whether it’s common in Taiwan — and what locals say instead if it isn’t. Learning Mainland Mandarin? It works the same way for China: whether a word is commonly used, spoken, or written.

There’s more for the Taiwan track: TOCFL word lists from Novice 1 to Level 5, Taiwan Mandarin Top 1000, Taiwan Slang & Expressions, and stories that automatically use Taiwan vocabulary when you study Taiwan-style.

And the library keeps growing

The catalog is now 600+ graded stories and 33 subtitled videos — historical biographies, startup-founder series, adapted classics, detective serials — with comprehension quizzes to check yourself at the end. Browse what that looks like in our graded readers guide.

加油！
Ray