VerticalChinese

Vertical Chinese is a calm, beautiful place to read classical Chinese (文言) — and a built-in dictionary that helps you understand every character.

Read the Daodejing, the Analects, Mencius, Zhuangzi, Tang poetry, Records of the Grand Historian, and more — 250+ foundational texts, laid out vertically and character by character, the way they were written.

READ • Vertical, character-by-character layout with a steady pinyin gutter • Toggle Traditional 繁 / Simplified 简, pinyin 拼, and English 英 • 聽書 read-aloud (audiobook) mode, plus per-word pronunciation • Warm rice-paper design, with light & dark themes

UNDERSTAND — a dictionary built in • Tap any character for pinyin, meaning, and animated stroke order • Full CC-CEDICT word lookup — search by character, pinyin, or English • Radical index to find characters you can't type • Example sentences with pinyin and English

REMEMBER • Save any character or word with a tap • Spaced-repetition flashcards (練習) to review what you save • Track your progress from carp to dragon — 鯉躍龍門