Inkpaper: Read Chinese Stories

Learn Chinese by reading stories you'll actually want to finish: mysteries, thrillers, sci-fi, wuxia, workplace comedy and everyday life, and more, written for adults and told in short chapters. Inkpaper is for complete beginners and long-time learners alike. Every story is graded by HSK level, so you start wherever you are.

New stories each week.

READ • Pinyin or tone marks above the characters when you want them, off when you don't. • The meaning of every word and the translation of every sentence, right there in the text. • Every word underlined in the colour of its HSK level, so you see at a glance how hard a page is. • The grammar behind each sentence, one tap away: the complete HSK 3.0 grammar syllabus, every point explained with examples. Highlight a point and it lights up in every story. • Simplified or Traditional characters, with pinyin or zhuyin.

LISTEN • Every chapter read aloud, with the sentence being spoken highlighted as it plays, in your choice of voice and at the speed you want. • Every word and every sentence has its own audio too. • A hands-free listening loop for your saved words that keeps going with the screen locked.

REMEMBER • Save any word while you read. Spaced repetition (FSRS) brings it back just before you would forget it. • Recognise it, recall it, or say it out loud. When a tone is off, you see your pitch drawn next to the model's. • Each card can show its word in a sentence from the stories, and keep a note of your own. • The words you saved from a story become its own deck, chapter by chapter, so you can prepare before you read. • Anki works both ways: import your deck, or export your words with audio.

SPEAK • Read a sentence aloud and see which words came out right and where a tone was off. • A tones drill shows you which tones you still mix up.

A SHORT LESSON EVERY DAY • One tap plans today: the words that are due, a grammar point, and the next part of your story. You see up front what today asks, and the app tells you when you're done.

NEW TO CHINESE? • A step-by-step mode teaches your first stories sentence by sentence: the new words, then the grammar, then the sentence itself, and then the whole chapter.

ALSO • Stories download for reading offline. • Streaks, daily reminders and medals to collect. • On iPhone and iPad. • Classrooms for teachers: assign a chapter with its words and grammar, and see how the class is getting on.

Inkpaper is free and has no ads. Feedback reaches me directly through the speech bubble on the Home tab, and I answer inside the app.