The 10 best Chinese Anki decks (2027)

vocabulary list · B2-C2 · 5,787 notes · no audio · updated February 2019

A 5,787-card chengyu dictionary in flashcard form, with usable definitions and example sentences but no study order, so it is worth mining selectively rather than studying front to back.

Verdict

The Back field is solid in the core: pinyin, a Chinese definition and often an origin quotation, as on 后来居上 and 忍辱负重. About two thirds of the sampled cards add an example sentence with ～ for the idiom, such as 例句：他～地把成绩册交给父母. The order is weak, though. The deck is roughly alphabetical by pinyin, with strays like 万变不离其宗 as card 1 and 揠苗助长 among the bā/bái cards at the end, so nothing separates common idioms from obscure ones. 百步无轻担 and 百足之虫，死而不僵 sit among the first 30 cards beside 百发百中 and 百折不挠. The synonym and antonym lines are the least reliable part. 忍俊不禁 lists 泣不成声 on both its synonym and antonym lines, 掩人耳目 repeats 众目睽睽 on both, and the lists include odd strings such as 甘拜匣镧 and 老婆当军. Many example sentences are dated or political ("保卫延安", "社会主义事业"), and some cards have none at all (百动不如一静, 仁心仁术). The deck has no audio, no images, no tags and one card template.

Use it if you already read Chinese at roughly B2 or higher, can read monolingual definitions, and want a lookup-and-review reference for chengyu. It suits you if you will pick the idioms you actually meet and suspend the rest. Skip it if you need a graded path, an English gloss, pronunciation practice or a core vocabulary list. The deck covers only 356 of the 1,000 most common words and none of the everyday function words, and it will not take you from beginner to intermediate. Even at B2, working through it in order means spending a lot of reviews on idioms you will rarely see.

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Number 5 in our ranking. Its scores and full report are in the top 10 above.

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mixed · A1-B2 · 111,583 notes · audio on 9% · updated June 2021

A very large frequency-ordered Mandarin deck, 5,000 word cards plus about 100,000 subtitle-style sentence cards, that is only worth studying if you are willing to cut it down and check it as you go.

Verdict

The ordering is the strength. The word strand starts 的, 我, 你, 了, 是 and the sample's measured coverage is strong: 100 of the top 100 words and 957 of the top 1,000 are taught, almost all in the first quarter. In the sample, sentences add at most one unfamiliar word, and many are short, natural lines you could say, like 我在睡觉 and 不要告诉我. The material itself is the weak part. The English comes from machine translation, as the author admits, and it shows. 少校 is glossed 'Goodbye, college', 她是个好人 is given a gloss of 'a good man', and 身l乏宣直 is a garbled string with a made-up translation. Several entries are not sentences at all (大强, 平吉, 瑞哥, 热狗), and the example sentences under the first words are stilted or absurd ('Is you.', 'Is he'). A card's first translation is often right while the alternates beneath it are wrong, and you cannot tell which is which without already knowing the answer. Sentence cards have no audio, there is no grammar teaching, and nothing connects the sentences.

Use this if you are already past the basics, can spot a bad gloss, and want a big frequency-ordered pool to prune. The word strand with its Wiktionary buttons works as a reference-backed vocabulary list, and the best sentence cards are decent reading practice. Skip it if you are a true beginner, because you will memorize wrong translations without noticing. Skip it too if you want listening practice, since the sentence cards are silent and the 'ear' cards put the Chinese text on the front. It is also a poor fit if you want grammar explained or a course that builds on itself.

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vocabulary list · B2-C2 · 10,368 notes · no audio · updated September 2022

A 10,368-entry monolingual chengyu dictionary packaged as Anki cards, useful as a reference for advanced readers but not a deck you can study in order.

Verdict

The deck's strengths are the card content. Every entry has a pinyin line, a Chinese definition, and usually a real classical or literary source quotation (出处), plus synonyms, antonyms and a category tag where the data exists. The definitions are clear and in the learner's target language, which suits the stated B2-C2 level. The weaknesses are structural. Entries are in character order, not frequency or difficulty order. In the sample, 一世之雄 and 一傅众咻 come right next to 一举两得, and common idioms such as 随机应变 and 事不宜迟 are mixed in with 龟毛兔角 and 龟冷支床. There are no modern example sentences, no audio (the 发音 field was empty in every sampled note, and the measurement shows 0 of 10,368 notes with sound) and no images. The sample also shows scattered text errors, such as 执照老规矩办事 where 按照 is meant, 过洒 for 过河 in the 同舟共济 definition, and an 出处 for 龙鸣狮吼 that quotes 龙鸣虎吼. Some synonym and antonym pairs are odd, for example 岿然不动 as the antonym of 逃之夭夭. The low late new-word rate in the measurements mostly reflects characters repeating across idioms, not careful pacing.

This deck suits an advanced reader who already handles Chinese text and wants an idiom reference on their phone, or who is willing to cut it down to a subset of useful entries. It does not suit anyone who expects a course, or anyone who needs to produce idioms in speech or writing. Studying 10,368 cards front to back would spend most of your time on archaic entries you will rarely meet.

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vocabulary list · A1-C1 · 3,000 notes · audio on 100% · updated December 2015

A 3,000-card list of single hanzi in frequency order, with audio and a stroke diagram on every card, that works as a character and writing drill but not as a way to learn Chinese.

Verdict

What it does well: the order is Jun Da's character frequency rank, so the opening is 的, 一, 是, 不, 了, 在, 人, 有, 我, 他. Every note has audio and a stroke-order diagram (3,000 of 3,000 each), and the notes carry radical, stroke count, HSK level and Traditional forms with no duplicates. What it does badly: there are no sentences, example words or grammar notes, so nothing is learned in context. In the sample the data is uneven. 丝 lists Traditional as 糸 rather than 絲. 叶 leads with the reading xié and the gloss 'to harmonize', not yè 'leaf'. 呢 leads with ní, not ne. 捷 is glossed 'win, victory' when its core sense is swift. HSK shows '#N/A' on cards like 刘, 彭 and 腺. Because the unit is the character, common words such as 我们, 一个, 没有 and 什么 are never taught as words, and the deck covers only 31% of the top 1,000 words on the frequency list. By the second half, many cards are surnames, place names or rare literary characters, such as 刘, 彭, 湘 'Hunan province' and 毓.

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Number 9 in our ranking. Its scores and full report are in the top 10 above.

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vocabulary list · A1 · 150 notes · audio on 100% · updated July 2020

A complete 150-word HSK 1 deck with audio and an image on every card, but it is in alphabetical order and has a scattering of wrong pinyin and translations, so treat it as a reference to check against, not a course to follow.

Verdict

What it does well: it covers the whole HSK 1 list, one card per word, with a short everyday example sentence (爸爸在家, 你是谁?) in both scripts, pinyin, zhuyin and English, and audio and an image on every note by the file count. Zhuyin on every sentence is rare and useful. What it does badly: the notes run alphabetically by pinyin, so card 4 is 杯子 and 桌子 in one sentence (4 of 4 words new), while 我们 does not arrive until card 112. In the first tenth of the deck, none of the sentences add one new word or fewer; the second tenth manages 8%. Sentences only become easy to read in the last third, when most vocabulary has already been seen. Accuracy is also a real problem in the sample. 明天下午一点 is translated 'Tomorrow 1 a.m.', 昨天下午 becomes 'yesterday morning', 妈妈打电话给我 is 'Mom is calls me', and 我是你的好朋友 is 'He's your friend'. 读 is spelled 'dòu', 和 is 'hè' with zhuyin ㄏㄢˋ, and 九 is spelled 'jǐu'. 商店裡 sits in the Simplified field with a Traditional character. The Definition field also dumps full dictionary entries on a beginner: 点 has 22 glosses, and 小姐 includes a slang sense for prostitute.

Use it if you are preparing for the HSK 1 word list, already have a textbook or teacher setting the order, can tell a wrong tone mark from a right one, and want zhuyin or Traditional characters. Skip it if you are a true beginner working alone, because you would absorb some wrong readings and meanings with no way to notice, and you would be learning words in an order that follows the alphabet and not what you need first. Also skip it if you want a deck that teaches grammar or builds from one sentence to the next.

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Number 4 in our ranking. Its scores and full report are in the top 10 above.

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vocabulary list · HSK 1 to HSK 7-9 (A1-C2) · 11,042 notes · audio on 100% · updated September 2022

A full HSK 3.0 word list (11,042 cards, HSK 1 to 9) built for drawing characters from pinyin and an English gloss, useful as a writing drill but not as a way to learn the language.

Verdict

The deck's strengths are coverage and audio presence. The sample follows the HSK level order, covers 95% of the 1,000 most common words on a general frequency list, and every note carries a sound file (I can't judge how good the recordings are). Each card is one word with Simplified, Traditional, pinyin and a gloss, so you always know what you are being asked to learn. The weaknesses are real, though. There are no example sentences, no context and no grammar notes anywhere, so you learn each word as an isolated gloss. Within each level the order is alphabetical by pinyin, not by usefulness or difficulty (HSK 1 opens 爱, 爱好, 爸爸, 白, 八). The Meaning field is raw CC-CEDICT output and it shows. 白 on card 4 carries 22 glosses including "reactionary", "anti-communist" and "funeral". 帮 lists "old variant of 幫|帮[bang1]" twice. Many cards show markup like "CL:個|个[ge4]". The sample also had outright errors: 女士 is given as "nǔ shì" (it should be nǚ), 做证 is glossed "Do one", 关系 has the Traditional form 關系 (it should be 關係), and 别 has 彆 as its Traditional form, which is not the usual character for the common meaning.

Use this if you already have a textbook or tutor and want a free, level-organized list to practice writing and recognizing characters, especially if you are preparing for HSK 3.0. It also works as a checklist of what each level expects. Do not use it as your main course, and do not use it if you want to understand how words behave in sentences, learn grammar, or build listening and reading fluency. Treat the glosses and pinyin as drafts to check against a dictionary, not as settled fact.

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vocabulary list · HSK 1-9 (new HSK 3.0, roughly A1-C2) · 11,042 notes · audio on 100% · updated January 2025

A large HSK 1-9 word list with audio on every note and five ways to drill each word, but no sentences, so it works as a vocabulary and character reference and not as a full course.

Verdict

The deck's strength is its vocabulary list and its audio. It follows the new HSK 3.0 levels from 的, 我, 你 up to 与时俱进 and 正能量, so the common words come early and the rare ones are pushed into HSK 7-9. Every one of the 11,042 notes has a sound file, and each word comes with Simplified, Traditional, pinyin, zhuyin, tone-mark and stroke-order cards. Its weaknesses are in the material. Only about 2% of the notes are sentences, so you never see a word used in context, and nothing teaches grammar beyond dictionary glosses of particles like 吗 and 吧. The glosses are copied from a dictionary and are not written for learners. Card 1 for 的 opens with four readings, including 'see 的士[di1 shi4]', and 那, 都 and 能 each carry surname entries. The last HSK 7-9 notes look machine-generated and are wrong or unusable: 说老实话 is glossed 'Truth', 说起来 'Say', 贪玩儿 'Greedy', 做证 'Do one'. Some Traditional forms are also odd, such as 是 shown as 昰 and 了 as 瞭.

Use this deck if you already study from a textbook or course and want a drill for the HSK word list, with audio and character recognition and writing practice. It suits someone who wants to pick which of the five card types to study. Skip it if you want to learn to read or understand Chinese from this deck alone. The cards never show a word in context, and the early glosses can bury a beginner in rare senses. Treat the final HSK 7-9 entries with suspicion and check them against another dictionary.

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vocabulary list · HSK 1-6 (A1-C1) · 4,995 notes · no audio · updated February 2016

A complete HSK 1-6 vocabulary list built from CC-CEDICT: useful as exam-word coverage and a reference, but it has no sentences, no audio and no images, so it works only as a supplement.

Verdict

The deck's strength is coverage and structure. It holds all 4,995 HSK words in level order, with Simplified, Traditional, pinyin, classifiers and four card directions per note. In the sample, characters and pinyin are correct and the glosses are real dictionary entries. The weaknesses are bigger. Not one note has an example sentence (47 of 4,990 notes are four words or more, and those are mostly set phrases), so you never see a word used in context. There is no audio on any note. Glosses are unedited CC-CEDICT: 立 一个 style entries like 本 list ten senses, 点 lists eighteen, and 吃 includes 'to stammer (Taiwan pr. for this sense is [ji2])', with nothing marking the main meaning. Order within each level is alphabetical by pinyin, so notes #1-#30 run from 爱 to 分钟 with no thematic grouping. Level-wise, the early 'HSK 1' stretch includes 羊肉 and 铅笔 (both ranked past 16,000 in the frequency list), while 778 of the top 1,000 frequent words are taught and common items like 一个, 这个 and 他们 never appear as their own entries.

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vocabulary list · A1-B2 · 800 notes · audio on 100% · updated July 2017

An 800-character Mandarin deck with audio and stroke-order images on every card, and a sound order for the first few hundred characters, but its sentences are not graded and its text contains scattered errors you will have to catch yourself.

Verdict

The deck does well at the character level. Each card gives one hanzi, tone-colored reading, meaning, up to five example words, a sentence with translation, stroke-order image and audio. The opening follows frequency: 92 of the 100 most common list words appear, mostly in the first quarter, starting with 一, 二, 三, 人, 他, 好, 的, 你. It does badly at everything built on top of that. The sentences are not matched to what you already know: only 6% to 26% of sentences in any tenth of the deck add at most one new word. Card 4 (十) has a sentence in which all 5 words are new, 这颗钻石重十克. Sequencing is loose too: 夫 comes before 小 and 你. Accuracy is uneven. In the sample, card 9's sentence 昨天他手今天不来了 has 手 where 说 is meant, card 16 has 女运动鬼 for 运动员, and card 27 (太) carries the example words for 大. Card 2 glosses 二曰 as 'February', and card 80 (别) has examples with no pinyin. Several pinyin spellings are wrong (jīe, líu, dīu, jìu). Sentences are reused: 这颗钻石重十克 appears on both 十 and 重, and 我在这里办公 on both 公 and 办. Past the first few hundred notes the picks drift toward rare characters (辅, 傅, 磁), and the deck covers only 532 of the top 1,000 words. There is no grammar teaching and no connected context.

Use this as a character-recognition and compound-word supplement, not as a course. It suits someone who already reads pinyin, is working through a textbook or other sentence material, and wants stroke order, audio and common compounds for each character. It is a poor first deck for a true beginner, who will meet idioms like 三心二意 and 十全十美 on the first few cards, and a poor choice for anyone who wants graded sentences or grammar. Plan to proofread as you go, because the errors are real and a learner cannot always tell them from correct usage.

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vocabulary list · A1-A2 · 729 notes · audio on 100% · updated October 2016

A picture-and-audio flashcard list of 729 single Chinese words with no sentences and no grammar, useful as a pronunciation and recognition drill but not as a way to learn the language.

Verdict

The deck is strong on sensory support. Nearly every note has a picture and a recording, and the comprehension card is clean: character and pinyin on the front, then picture, English gloss, IPA and audio. Most pinyin, glosses and counters in the sample are right. The material is weak where it matters most. All 719 measured notes are single words or short phrases, so you never see a word used in a sentence. The order follows no difficulty or frequency principle: it opens with 可口可乐, 百事可乐, 酸奶 and 珍珠奶茶, and the first 723 words cover only 19% of the top 1,000 on the frequency list. Very common words such as 在, 有, 不, 也, 吗, 会 and 很 are never taught. There are also small errors: the IPA and audio fields are swapped on notes like 生气 and 合同, 否 is given the counter zhāng, and 'Phillipines' is misspelled. The Counter field is filled on many notes but no card template displays it.

Use it if you are a beginner who already has a textbook or course for grammar and sentences. It works as a supplement for hearing words, matching them to pictures and picking up concrete nouns like food, body parts and household objects. Do not rely on it if you want to read, speak or build sentences, or if you expect it to teach the most useful words first. As a standalone path to A2 it falls short, even though the stated level is A1-A2.

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Number 6 in our ranking. Its scores and full report are in the top 10 above.

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vocabulary list · A1-C1 · 4,960 notes · audio on 100% · updated November 2023

A complete, carefully checked vocabulary list for the Dangdai Chinese textbook series, books 1-6, that works only as a companion to the books and is a poor standalone course.

Verdict

The deck's strengths are accuracy, audio and order. The sampled cards (你, 發燒, 壓力, 劫富濟貧) show correct pinyin, sensible English glosses, and matching Traditional and Simplified pairs. Every note has an audio file, and the IDs (B1L01-I-04, B3L01-I-13) keep the book, lesson and dialogue order so you can follow your class. Its weakness is that it is words only. 97% of notes are single words or short phrases, and no sampled card shows a word in a sentence or dialogue line. Grammar is limited to labels like Vst, Vp-sep and Ph. The word order is the book's, so about 69% of the words in the middle and late parts are new, and the later books lean on rare, specific items such as 博物院, 烘焙 and 產科. Nothing in the deck helps you tell which words are worth keeping.

Use it if you are working through the Dangdai books with a class or tutor and want a lesson-by-lesson vocabulary drill with audio, especially one you can filter by ID. Do not use it as your only study material, and do not choose it if you want sentence cards, grammar practice, or vocabulary picked for frequency. Learners who prefer Simplified will also find that it is built around Traditional and Taiwanese usage, with Simplified held in a field the card never shows.

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vocabulary list · unclear · 235 notes · no audio · updated February 2018

A 235-card chengyu list from a gaokao student, with an idiom on the front and a short Chinese gloss on the back; it is a quick check-list for exam prep, not a deck to learn Chinese from.

Verdict

The deck's strength is that it is cheap and fast to use. One idiom goes on the front and a one-line Chinese gloss on the back, such as 釜底抽薪 / 从根本上解决问题 and 河清海晏 / 天下太平. Most spellings and glosses in the sample look usable, and the register tags like （贬） and （褒） on some cards are helpful. The weaknesses are structural. There are no example sentences, no audio, no images, no pinyin field and no tags or subdecks. The glosses are often a few characters long, and some are loose: 暴虎冯河 is glossed as 明知不可为而为之, which misses the sense of reckless bravery. Card #30 reads 从恶如登, and the idiom is normally written 从恶如崩, which would teach you a wrong form. The order shows no plan. The first 30 cards already include 胼手胝足, 奉为圭臬 and 含英咀华 next to easier items, and nothing in the sample moves from common to rare. Two measurements mislead here. The "76% sentences" figure and the new-word curve come from jieba splitting four-character idioms into pieces, so they say nothing about progression. The frequency coverage (11% of the top 1,000) is also a poor yardstick for a chengyu list.

This suits an advanced Chinese reader, such as a gaokao or similar exam candidate, who already reads fluently in Chinese and wants a quick list of idioms to check themselves on. A learner who can use a dictionary alongside it and will build their own example sentences can also get some value from it. Do not use it if you are a beginner or intermediate learner, if you need English or any other translation, or if you want to learn how idioms are used in real sentences. It is also a poor choice if you need to hear the pronunciation, since pinyin appears only on a few cards and there is no audio.

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vocabulary list · HSK 1-9 (new HSK 3.0, roughly A1-C2) · 44,168 notes · audio on 100% · updated January 2025

A 44,168-card HSK 3.0 word list, four drill types for each of 11,042 words, with audio on every card but no sentences; worth studying only as a word-and-stroke drill beside a real sentence source.

Verdict

The deck does one thing well: it walks the HSK 3.0 word list in level order and drills each word four ways (write, hear, pinyin/zhuyin, meaning). The first cards are 的, 我, 你, 是, 了, 不, and in the sample the common words arrive early. The file measures 95% of the top 1,000 words on the frequency list as taught. Every card carries audio, though I can't hear it, so check a few yourself. It also has real weaknesses. There are no example sentences, so nothing shows how a word behaves in use, and 我们, 什么 and 知道 sit in isolation. Glosses are raw dictionary dumps: 的 opens with a see-reference to 的士 and a 'really and truly' sense, and 吗 opens with 'see 嗎啡, morphine' before the question particle. The tail looks unchecked. In the last run of cards, 说老实话 is glossed 'Truth', 说起来 'Say', 贪玩儿 'Greedy' and 做证 'Do one', and the pinyin there is inconsistent ('shuōlǎoshíhuà', 'tānwán r', 'zheyǎnyú'). In the sample, Traditional forms are sometimes just a variant, such as 是 shown as 昰. This is a sample of about 90 notes, so the error rate across the whole deck is unknown.

Use it if you are preparing for the new HSK, or you already have sentence input from a textbook or a course and want vocabulary, sound and character drills tied to the exam levels. Skip it if you want to learn to read or speak through sentences, if you want one clean card per word, or if you would rather not edit templates and cards. Four cards per word means 44,168 cards, so you will need to choose which card types to study and which HSK bands to start.

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vocabulary list · A1-B1 · 576 notes · audio on 100% · updated October 2014

A 576-note vocabulary deck for the NTNU textbook A Course in Contemporary Chinese vol. 1, useful only if you study alongside the book and are willing to re-sort it first.

Verdict

The deck's strengths are audio on every note, lesson tags (ke1 to ke15), short everyday example sentences, and measure words listed on many nouns. The vocabulary it picks is useful: 75 of the 100 most common Chinese words are taught, and the new-word rate in sentences falls from 68% to about 25% and stays there. The weaknesses are in the order and the details. The default order mixes lessons, so the deck opens with 嗎, 是, 來, 你 and then jumps to lesson 13 with 回來, 生日 and 豬腳麵線, and lesson 1 items like 咖啡 and 日本 turn up around card 146. Only 44% of sentences add one new word or fewer. Some examples are fragments or truncated (五點左右, 語言交換的時候, ...), and 62 notes have no example. The sample also holds real errors: 是阿 for 是啊, 下次把 for 下次吧, 翻倒第五頁 for 翻到第五頁, and tone marks on the wrong vowel in every -iu syllable (jìu, jǐu, líu, nǐu, qíu). There is no grammar explanation anywhere. The back template has the audio commented out, and each card is a single English-to-Chinese production card whose cue is often a short, ambiguous gloss like 'Be, yes, correct' or 'Come'.

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Number 3 in our ranking. Its scores and full report are in the top 10 above.

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Number 2 in our ranking. Its scores and full report are in the top 10 above.

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Number 1 in our ranking. Part 1 of a 3-part deck; each part is ranked on its own score. Its scores and full report are in the top 10 above.

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vocabulary list · unclear · 4,808 notes · no audio · updated July 2014

A 4,808-character Traditional/Simplified dictionary list with images and CC-CEDICT glosses, in no useful study order and with no words, sentences or audio, so it is only worth studying as a supplement.

Verdict

The deck does a few things well. The data is clean in the sample: readings, glosses and Traditional-to-Simplified pairings (蔔→卜, 劃→划, 體→体) look correct, there are no duplicate notes, and every card has a large, clear character and an image. It does badly at teaching. The order has no relation to frequency or difficulty: 蛙, 屠 and 弼 open the deck, 重 and 年 show up around card 20, and 本, 體 and 高 sit near the end. Each note is one character with raw CC-CEDICT lines, such as 啊 with five readings and sets of interjection glosses, and some entries are obscure (汨 is a river name, 楫 is an archaic oar). The deck has no sentences, no compound words, no audio and no tags or subdecks, so you never see how a character is used. One sampled note (綞, #2412) has no definition at all.

The deck suits an intermediate learner who already reads some Chinese and wants a Taiwan-standard character inventory to check off and fill gaps in, especially one who wants Traditional and Simplified side by side. It does not suit a beginner. The first notes include rare characters, and you would spend weeks on 畜 and 匍 before reaching vocabulary you can use. It also does not suit anyone who wants to read, listen or speak, because nothing here shows a character in a word or a sentence. If you use it, treat it as a reference list alongside a real course, not as the main study material.

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exam word list · HSK5 (about B2) · 1,300 notes · audio on 100% · updated July 2018

A complete HSK 2012 level 5 word list with audio on every note and three card types, but no sentences, no context and no useful order, so it works as exam vocabulary drill only.

Verdict

The deck covers its list well. All 1,300 notes carry a sound file, each with its own recording. Each note makes three cards (Hanzi to meaning, meaning to Hanzi, audio to meaning), and the Hanzi, pinyin, Spanish and English fields are filled on every sampled note. The weaknesses are structural. Every note is one word or a short phrase, so you never see a word used in a sentence. The order follows no difficulty or frequency logic: the opening runs through jīng-, jiǔ-, jué-, kàn- and so on, and the later notes cluster by shared first character (制作, 制定, 制度, 制造). Rare words arrive early, with 看不起 at card 12 and 空闲 at card 18, and 喷嚏 sits mid-deck. The glosses are uneven. 风俗 is glossed in Spanish as "personalizado", 鼓舞 has the English "to encouraged", and 顶 is glossed only as "to go against, to move towards". Near-synonyms get nearly identical glosses: 立即, 立刻 and 连忙 all read "inmediatamente, en seguida", and 制作 and 制造 both read "fabricar, producir". The meaning-to-Hanzi card can't be answered uniquely for those.

Use this if you already have the HSK 1-4 vocabulary, you are preparing for the 2012-format HSK 5, and you get your sentences and grammar from a textbook or reader. Recognition and listening are the strong side. Skip it if you want to learn Chinese from comprehensible input, if you are below roughly B1, or if you are following the newer HSK 3.0 lists. Treat the glosses as a starting point and check the odd ones against a dictionary.

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Number 7 in our ranking. Part 1 of a 2-part deck; each part is ranked on its own score. Its scores and full report are in the top 10 above.

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vocabulary list · A1 · 202 notes · audio on 100% · updated July 2015

Chinese Core 100 is a shuffled, image-and-audio list of about 101 beginner words and greetings with no sentences or grammar, so it works only as a light supplement and is not worth studying as a course.

Verdict

The deck is clean and easy to use. Every card tests one item, shows an image, and has audio and pinyin on the answer side. In the sample the translations and pinyin readings are right (二 èr, 茶 chá, 手 shǒu, 星期四 xīngqī sì). The selection and order are the weak part. Sunday (星期天), coffee and salesman (推销员) come in the first ten notes, while 你好 is note 20 and 一 is note 149. Only 38 of the 1,000 most common Chinese words appear, and common words like 在, 了, 我们, 什么 and 可以 are never taught. The only sentence is 很高兴见到你。 and the rest are single words or stock phrases such as 谢谢。 and 再见。 There is no example sentence, no grammar, and no dialogue. The English prompts are also sometimes ambiguous: 做 is glossed as both 'make' and 'do' on different notes, so you cannot tell which English word to answer.

Use it if you are a complete beginner who wants a small pool of picture-backed vocabulary (numbers, months, weekdays, body parts, food, greetings) with recorded pronunciation, alongside a real course or textbook. Skip it if you want a path from beginner toward reading or conversation. Nothing here teaches you to build or understand a sentence, and the vocabulary is a themed list, not a core of the language.

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Number 8 in our ranking. Its scores and full report are in the top 10 above.

Get it on AnkiWeb (free shared deck)

Number 10 in our ranking. Its scores and full report are in the top 10 above.

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vocabulary list · A1-C1 · 9,169 notes · no audio · updated July 2024

A 9,169-word Chinese vocabulary list with a real TV-subtitle sentence on most cards, but the study order ignores level and frequency and the sentences are too long to learn from, so it is a resource to rework, not a deck to study as shipped.

Verdict

The coverage is the strength. The deck teaches 999 of the 1,000 most common words on the frequency list and 1,973 of the top 2,000, and almost every note has an authentic spoken sentence with an episode source (for example 平常 from NCIS New Orleans, 虽说 from Haven). Everything else is weak. Notes are not ordered by difficulty or frequency: the first notes are 联合, 焦点, 丙 and 养鸡场, while 没 (rank 32), 看 (rank 50) and the numbers 十一 and 二十 sit at the very end. The sentences average about 22 words and the opening sentences carry many unfamiliar words: 27.5% of word tokens in the first tenth are new, and only 6.8% of those sentences add at most one new word. The deck only becomes comprehensible later because the opening has already shown you thousands of words. Several examples do not illustrate the headword: the 得意 card highlights a fragment of 我的意思是说, 丙 is shown inside the drug name 丁丙诺啡, 相 appears inside 气相色谱, and the 联合 sentence runs on and is cut off while its English does not match. Pinyin is often nonstandard (zhǒnglíu, jìushì, xīongdì). Four cards per note means 36,676 cards, with small type and a cluttered front. There is no audio and no images.

Use it if you are already around HSK 3 to 4, read Chinese, and want a large word bank to pull from. It suits someone willing to reorder it, suspend most card types and tolerate crime-drama vocabulary (尸体, 肿瘤, 毒贩 show up constantly). Skip it if you are a beginner. A true A1 learner gets 丙 and 养鸡场 before 看, and gets sentences that mostly consist of unknown words. Also skip it if you want graded input, grammar progression, or sentences you can trust as models without checking them.

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exam word list · A1-C1 (TOCFL Bands 0-3) · 7,965 notes · no audio · updated May 2019

A complete TOCFL Bands 0-3 word list (7,965 notes) that works as a lookup and recognition drill, but it has no sentences, no audio and no images, and it opens in the wrong order.

Verdict

The deck covers the TOCFL list thoroughly: it teaches 917 of the 1,000 most common words on the frequency list, and every note carries Traditional, Simplified, pinyin, part of speech and a CEDICT definition with classifier info. The three cards per note (Hanzi to meaning, pinyin to hanzi, English to hanzi) test different skills. Beyond that it is a bare word list. There are no example sentences (16 of 7,278 measured notes have four or more words), no audio and no images. The file order is also off: it starts mid-Band 0 at 下課 and 說話, and the first ~200 Band 0 entries, including 好 and 高, sit at the very end of the deck. Common words are therefore spread unevenly: 33% of new words in the first tenth are top-1,000, and 2% in tenths 7-9. The data is rough. Several pinyin fields use a breve instead of a caron (老是 lăoshì, 表情 biăoqíng, 蝦米 xiāmĭ, 中暑 zhòngshŭ). Some notes are malformed: 有(一)點 has just 有 as its simplified form and definition, and 炸/炸 is doubled. 花 and 畫 appear twice with the same definition. Definitions are raw CEDICT, with surname entries and long sense lists (門 runs through 'phylum' and '-gate'). On the English card, the definition shown as the prompt starts with the answer's numeric pinyin, such as [xia4 ke4].

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exam word list · A1-C1 · 7,517 notes · audio on 100% · updated November 2023

A complete, accurately parsed TOCFL vocabulary list with audio on every card, useful as exam-prep vocabulary but not a way to learn Chinese from context.

Verdict

The deck does one job well: it follows the official TOCFL levels from Novice 1 (我, 你/妳, 他/她, 時間) up to Level 5 (座右銘, 遵循, 作戰), so difficulty rises in the way the exam expects. Frequent words arrive early: 96 of the top 100 words on the frequency list appear, mostly in the first quarter. Every note has audio, and the sampled cards show Traditional, Simplified, pinyin and glosses that agree with each other. The weak side is that it is only words. 7,160 of 7,187 measured notes are single words or short phrases, so there are no example sentences, no context, and no grammar handling beyond a POS tag and CC-CEDICT classifier notes like "CL:個|个[ge4],位[wei4]". Within each level, entries run alphabetically by pinyin (平等, 平時, 平原, 品質 in one run), so you meet words in sound order rather than usefulness order. The glosses are borrowed from mainland-oriented CC-CEDICT, so some do not match the Taiwanese entry: 品質 carries a gloss that reads [pǐnzhì] against the card's pǐnzhí, 危險 reads [wēixiǎn] against wéixiǎn, and 接下來 is glossed "to accept/to take/next/following", which fits 接 more than the phrase. Some glosses also run long, such as 起 and 家, with rare senses you will not need.

Use it if you are preparing for a TOCFL band and want the official list in Anki with a Taiwanese-voice recording and Traditional script as the main face. It also suits a learner who already studies from a textbook or immersion and wants a checklist of exam words. Skip it as a first or only course, or if you want to learn how words behave in sentences, or if you want to produce Chinese rather than recognize it. Cards test recognition only (hanzi to pinyin and meaning), and the frequency list also shows many everyday words, such as 一个, 这个 and 不是, never get their own card, because they appear as parts of other entries or not at all.

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mixed · B1-B2 · 827 notes · audio on 100% · updated September 2026

Part 3 of a 3-part deck; each part is ranked on its own score.

A vocabulary-list companion to New Practical Chinese Reader 3, lessons 27-38, worth using only if you are working through that textbook and are happy to supply the sentences and grammar yourself.

Verdict

The deck does one job well: it puts each lesson's word list on cards with audio on every note, a stroke-order animation, and three recall directions. In the sample the hanzi, pinyin and glosses are mostly right, and the lesson subdecks and Text_1, Text_2 and Supplementary tags mirror the book. The weak part is what surrounds the words. 725 of 827 notes are bare words like 茶馆 "N: teahouse" or 壶 "N, M: kettle, pot", and the Examples field was empty in the sample, so you never see a word in a sentence. The 102 key sentences are natural and at the right level, but they are not tied to the word cards. They are not gated to known vocabulary either: #7 大家一边喝茶，一边聊天儿 introduces all 5 of its words at once, while #615 我想去哪儿就去哪儿 introduces none. There are no grammar explanations. There are small slips: 了解 is spelled "liǎojǐe", 搬 is labeled "N: to move", and the glosses include "to leven up" and "embarassing". Measured against a general frequency list, the deck covers 32% of the top 1,000 words and never uses 年, 问题, 如果 or 因为. That is a textbook's selection, not a frequency-driven one, and it opens with 入乡随俗, 保健品 and 书法家.

Use it if you own the textbook, are at roughly B1-B2, already know the vocabulary from books 1 and 2, and want audio and character-writing drills for each lesson's word list. The Draw card, with pinyin plus meaning on the front and hanzi plus stroke animation on the back, suits learners who want to write characters. Do not use it as a standalone course, to learn grammar, or to build reading fluency from sentences. It starts at lesson 27, so a learner without the earlier books will find most words unfamiliar from the first card. It also holds only about 1,000 distinct words, so it is no route to general frequency coverage.

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vocabulary list · A2-B1 · 699 notes · audio on 100% · updated September 2026

Part 2 of a 3-part deck; each part is ranked on its own score.

A tidy, fully voiced vocabulary list for New Practical Chinese Reader 2 that works as a companion to the textbook, but it has no sentences or grammar and cannot teach Chinese on its own.

Verdict

The deck does a few things well. All 699 notes follow the textbook's lesson order, with one subdeck per lesson from 15 to 26. Every note has audio and a stroke-order animation. Each word gets three cards: meaning to hanzi, hanzi to meaning, and pinyin plus meaning to hanzi. Its weakness is the material itself. Every sampled Examples field is empty, and 99% of notes are single words or short phrases, such as 银行 'bank' or 突然 'suddenly'. You never see a word used in a sentence, a dialogue line or a grammar pattern. Selection follows the book, not frequency: in the sample, 明信片 'postcard' arrives at 3% of the deck and 兵马俑 in the first 18 notes, while only 200 of the 1,000 most common words appear (book 1 presumably covers many others). Quality control is uneven. 想想 is headed 'to imagine' with the pinyin xiǎngxiàng, which is the word 想象. The glosses include 'sea transporation' and 'invit sb.'. The first note, 得, has 'de (a structural particle)' in the Pinyin field. The « » marks are inconsistent between lessons.

Use it if you own the NPCR 2 textbook, are already past book 1, and want a ready-made, voiced list of each lesson's words to review alongside the lesson texts. It suits learners who also want to see how characters are written. Skip it if you want to learn from sentences or grammar, if you are not using this textbook, or if you are a beginner. It teaches words out of context and leaves you to find the context elsewhere, and it is not a frequency-ordered core vocabulary.

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vocabulary list · HSK 6 (C1) · 2,500 notes · audio on 100% · updated May 2025

Part 2 of a 2-part deck; each part is ranked on its own score.

A 2,500-word HSK 6 list with audio on every note and short example sentences on only about 38% of the sampled notes, worth studying only as exam-vocabulary review for someone who already knows the lower HSK levels.

Verdict

The deck works as a word list and does little more. Every note has audio, the English glosses and pinyin in the sample are almost all correct, and the sentences that exist are short and natural: 他«疲惫»不堪, 游泳是她的«专长», 地铁«间隔»五分钟一班. Many cards have no sentence at all, for example 岁月, 约束, 部署, 迫害, 精通, so you meet those words bare. Order is loose rather than graded: the new-word rate falls from 67% to about 35%, but only 19% of sentences add at most one new word, and 鼻涕 (about rank 27,000) turns up at 1% of the deck. The sentences are single, unconnected lines, and the deck has no grammar notes. Some sentences prove less useful than they look, such as 煎饼 for 煎 and 铜版 for 铜, where the headword sits inside a compound. A few pinyin fields are corrupted (bụ̀gù, yị̄xiàng, a run-together line for 仁慈, lookalike ɡ characters in 领事馆).

Use it if you are preparing for the HSK 6 exam, or already read comfortably at the HSK 5 level and want the official vocabulary with audio to check yourself against. The deck never teaches words like 但, 因为 or 怎么, so it assumes you learned them elsewhere. Skip it if you are earlier than that, if you want graded reading or a grammar path, or if you want your vocabulary to come from sentences you can parse one new word at a time. The single recognition card, which shows the headword on the front, also leaves recall of the word untested.

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exam word list · unclear · 793 notes · no audio · updated June 2019

Classical chinese vocabulary for native-speaking high school students.

A 793-card gaokao classical-Chinese word list of real exam sentences, grouped by headword, worth studying only as a rough base that you must check and finish yourself.

Verdict

The deck's strength is its material. Nearly every card (97% in the measurements) is a genuine textbook or exam sentence, and cards for the same character sit together so you see its range of senses: 信 as 相信, 信物, 音讯, 确实, 随意, then 兴 as 兴起, 发动, 兴致, 起来. That is the right way to prepare for gaokao 实词 questions. The weaknesses are in the execution. The target word is marked with «» on none of the first 30 cards, so #2 疏屈平而信上官大夫 → 相信 leaves you guessing which character is asked, and #11 repeats the same sentence with 信任. Some sentences are mistyped: #27 reads 大王亦奉赦臣 where the source has 幸. Some glosses are garbled: #727 says 秦穆公身着白色丧父在郊外,对着被释放回来的将士放生大哭, and #269 reads 通“众”，zòng次于最亲的亲属. Sentences are not ordered by difficulty. Only 3.8% of the sentences in the first tenth add at most one new word, because each excerpt arrives with many unfamiliar words around the target. There is no grammar teaching beyond the occasional 通假 or 使动 note, and no source tags. The cards are recognition-only, with a bare Basic template, no audio and no images. The author's description says the bolding was never finished.

This suits a Chinese-speaking student preparing for the gaokao who already reads some classical Chinese, wants many example sentences per headword, and will check each card against a textbook or dictionary. It does not suit a beginner in classical Chinese, since the sentences are unglossed and the sequence follows the headword list rather than any build-up of difficulty. It also does not suit anyone who wants grammar explained, or an English-speaking learner, because every explanation is in Chinese. Do not trust the cards as an answer key without checking them, because the typos and garbled glosses are in the sample you can see.

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alphabet or script deck · A1-A2 · 214 notes · no audio · updated July 2015

Characters: the 214 radicals.

A complete 214-card Kangxi radical list in dictionary order, accurate at the core but thin on teaching, so it works as a reference to skim, not a deck to study from the first card.

Verdict

The radical, pinyin and meaning fields I checked are correct, and the deck covers all 214 radicals in the standard stroke-count order with no duplicates and no missing fields. Beyond that it does little. The cards are one-way recognition: radical on the front, then pinyin, meaning and examples on the back. Nothing separates the answer from the extras. The Examples field is the weak part. It piles on characters, such as 10 on #167 金 and 16 on #30 口, and by the later cards they are mostly rare ones (#205 鼈,黿,鼆; #209 鼼,鼽,鼿). Some entries repeat (#166 野,野; #175 靠,靠), some mix in Japanese forms (#30 呉; #61 悪,戦), and one romanization is not pinyin (#162 "zouzhi"). The frequency check backs this up: the deck teaches only 4% of the top 1,000 words. Kangxi order follows stroke count, not how often a radical appears in everyday characters, so the early cards are not the most useful ones.

Use it if you want the full radical inventory in front of you and plan to decide yourself which radicals matter. It suits a learner who already knows some characters and wants to name the components inside them. Skip it if you are an A1-A2 beginner looking for a gradual path into reading. The deck does not rank radicals by usefulness, does not trim its example lists, and has no sentences or context to hold the characters in place.

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poetry collection · unclear · 313 notes · no audio · updated March 2019

Classical poems to memorize, in chinese only, made for native speakers.

A bare text dump of the 313 Tang poems in the Three Hundred Tang Poems anthology, usable for memorizing the poems themselves but not for learning Chinese.

Verdict

The deck's strength is its content: canonical poems by Li Bai, Du Fu, Wang Wei and others, each as a title card whose back holds the author and full text. The short quatrains suit memorization, for example 江雪 and 鹿柴, which are 20 characters long. The deck's weaknesses are structural. The poems run in anthology order, so the long ones come first. Note #24 has 73 first-seen words, #7 has 70, and the third of the deck before the short poems averages over 100 words per card. The i+1 rate only reaches 52 to 68% in the last three tenths, after most of the vocabulary has already gone past. There is no translation, pinyin, annotation, audio or image. The text has real errors in the sample: unrendered characters like 雉[句隹]麦苗秀 and 四郊秋叶惊[扌戚][扌戚], 戌 written for 戍 (#88 黄龙戌, #102 戌鼓, #157 戌楼), a dropped character in #195 (惊风乱芙蓉水), and author names like 韩翎 for 韩翃. The back of each card is one unbroken string with the author's name glued to the first line.

Use this if you read Chinese well and want a free, plain-text copy of the 300 poems to memorize by recall, and you will proofread against a reliable edition as you go. Do not use it to build vocabulary or grammar. It covers only about 32% of the 1,000 most common words and never uses 你, 这, 我们 or 没有, and it gives a learner no help to understand classical lines. Expect to check each poem before trusting it.

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mixed · unclear · 223 notes · no audio · updated March 2019

Classical poems to memorize, in chinese only, made for native speakers.

A 223-card memorization list of classical Chinese poems and prose with no glosses, audio, or sequencing, useful only if you need to recite these exact texts, as the teacher-exam description suggests.

Verdict

The deck's strength is its text. In the sample, each card gives a numbered title on the front and the full original on the back, with dynasty and author on the title line: 《静夜思》-length quatrains like 《江雪》 and 《相思》, and long pieces like 《琵琶行》 (203 first-seen words in one card). The texts are the standard canonical versions, and the measurements show no duplicates and no missing fields. The weaknesses are structural. There are no translations, pinyin, annotations, or audio. The order is scrambled: 《琵琶行》 is #14, 《离骚》 (369 first-seen words) is #65, and short quatrains such as 《别董大》 and 《游子吟》 don't appear until #113 onward. Only 17% of notes add at most one new word. The vocabulary is classical and literary, and 67% of the top 1,000 modern words never appear. Several cards are walls of text, such as 《滕王阁序》, 《正气歌》 and 《陈涉世家》, that you can't review as one unit.

Use this if you are a native or advanced reader preparing for a teacher-qualification exam or a school curriculum, and you already understand classical Chinese and need a checklist of required texts to recite. Don't use it to learn Chinese, build everyday vocabulary, or read classical texts for the first time. Nothing on the cards explains meaning or grammar, and the words don't match modern usage. Anyone who needs to look up a line will have to do that elsewhere.

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alphabet or script deck · A1 · 42 notes · audio on 100% · updated April 2021

Pronunciation: the zhuyin (bopomofo) phonetic symbols and tone marks.

A compact 42-card Zhuyin symbol and tone-mark deck with a clear one-symbol-per-card design and full audio on the symbol cards, worth studying as a first pass at reading Zhuyin if you fix the card order.

Verdict

The deck covers the full set of 37 Zhuyin symbols in standard chart order: initials ㄅ through ㄙ, then finals ㄚ through ㄦ, then ㄧ ㄨ ㄩ, plus five tone-mark cards. Each front is one large symbol. The back gives audio, position, IPA, pinyin, Wade-Giles and one example character such as 包 bāo / ㄅㄠ. All 37 symbol cards have a sound file and the values I checked in the sample match standard Zhuyin and pinyin. The build is uneven, though. Card 1 (ㄅ) uses an example spelled ㄅㄠ, but ㄠ is not taught until card 28. Card 3 (ㄇ) shows ㄇㄧˊ, which needs ㄧ from card 35 and the tone mark ˊ from card 39. The tone cards come last, and they have no audio and no example. The back is crowded with three romanization columns and an etymology note ("From 勹, the ancient form..."), which matters little to a beginner. Some examples are obscure, such as 冞 mí for ㄇ, and the multi-example cards carry stray semicolons ("ㄓ;"). Nothing here teaches you to blend symbols into syllables or to read words.

Use it if you are starting Mandarin with Zhuyin, as in Taiwan, and want to recognize each symbol and attach its sound. Reorder it first so the examples don't lean on symbols you haven't met. Do not treat it as a way to learn Mandarin vocabulary, tones in practice or reading speed. It has no sentences, no words beyond single example characters, and no context, so plan to move to a vocabulary or reading deck within a week or two.

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poetry recitation deck · unclear · 152 notes · no audio · updated June 2026

Classical poems to memorize, in chinese only, made for native speakers.

A 152-card deck of canonical Chinese poems and ci, built for line-by-line recitation: worth using to memorize the classics, not to learn Chinese.

Verdict

The deck does one thing well: it presents famous poems in full, with title, dynasty and author on the front. The back reveals each line every 3 seconds with a progress bar and holds the annotations until the poem ends, which suits recitation. The selection is solid (李白《静夜思》, 杜甫《春望》, 苏轼《水调歌头》, 李清照《声声慢》, 白居易《琵琶行》). Everything else is thin. Cards are ordered by author, not difficulty, so a 382-character 琵琶行 and a 20-character 《金缕衣》 can sit near each other, and the opening already throws 47 new words at you in a single note (#2). There is no translation or modern-Chinese paraphrase. 脚注, 诗注 and 小传 appear only on some cards, and many cards in the sample (#33, #34, #52, #55, #56) have none. There is no audio and no images. The sample shows a few slips: 《惠崇春江晚景》 prints 篓蒿 in the poem but 蒌蒿 in the footnote, 蒹葭 has the malformed pinyin 'meí' for 湄, and 王翰's 《凉州词》 appears twice (#46 and #124) with identical text.

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cloze course · B2-C1 · 120 notes · no audio · updated March 2019

Classical chinese vocabulary for native-speaking high school students.

A 120-card cloze deck of Classical Chinese 实词, each card a short invented story that uses one character in many senses; worth studying for exam-style review of those senses, but not as a systematic course.

Verdict

The deck's best idea is to put every sense of one character into a single passage, so you see the senses side by side and then recall them. In #3 被, one story covers 表被动, 披散, 通“披”, 覆盖 and 遭受. The headwords (爱, 安, 被, 倍, 本 ... 走, 左, 坐) look like a standard 实词 list, and the back of each card links to an online dictionary. The weaknesses are real, though. The notes run in pinyin order of the headword with no difficulty ordering, and the measured new-word rate stays near 22–25% to the end. Each card also asks you to recall up to eight senses at once (#43 见, #42 间 and #67 少 are examples), and the prose is contrived. Several senses cannot be recovered from the story. In #120 坐 the story gives no help toward 驻守 or 犯罪. The sample also has copying errors: 桅垣 in #12, 凯靓 in #47, 甩丁 in #44, a note on 善 filed under the headword 盖 (#66), and dictionary tags like <形> and a stray 殆（知己知彼，百战不殆） left inside the answers.

Use it if you already read modern Chinese comfortably and want a compact checklist of the multi-sense characters that come up in school or exam 文言文. It works as a review layer over texts you have met, and you should check each gloss against the linked dictionary. Skip it if you are learning Classical Chinese from scratch, or if you want grammar explanation, graded reading, audio or images. It does not teach structures such as 被, 见 and 为 as patterns. It is also a poor fit if you need each sense graded on its own, because the cards grade them all together.

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mixed · unclear · 878 notes · audio on 100% · updated July 2020

Teaches sichuanese, a regional variety, not standard mandarin.

A large, audio-backed collection of real Sichuanese words and spoken sentences, built from someone's study notes rather than a course, and worth using only as a supplement to a teacher or native speakers.

Verdict

The strength is the material and the audio. Cards like 你批一哈!, 谢了哈, 莫得关系, 你有车没得 and 我啥子时候说我喜欢你哦 are short, spoken-register Sichuanese you would hear on the street, and every note but three has a recording, often from named regions (Chengdu, Chongqing, Mianyang, Yibin, Deyang). Past the opening, the sentences recycle earlier words. The new-word rate in sentences falls from 62.9% in the first tenth to 11.6% by the middle and stays low, though it jumps back to 24.9% in the last tenth. The weaknesses are accuracy, polish and structure. The first notes are chaotic: a Mandarin-gloss cloze on demonstratives, 脚指拇儿, 拉伸 with the author's note 'it might also mean "go straight"?', and 嫑呵我. Glosses are sometimes loose or wrong: 腊肉 is glossed 'chinese cured sausage'; the author flags 'Need to verify, but I think 出口 here means 出门'; and the second 这么 cloze shows 'nen2 go1' next to 'leng go'. Nearly every back shows empty placeholder lines ('Sichuanese pinyin: !MISSING!', 'Custom-pinyin: []'). Order follows when the author collected things, not a difficulty path, and some cards drift into poetry and political quotes.

Use this if you already read Chinese and have some Mandarin, you want to hear and recognize Sichuanese as it is actually spoken, and you can tolerate a few mistakes and ask a native speaker about anything that looks off. It also suits someone heading to Chengdu or Chongqing who wants everyday phrases, food and body vocabulary, and slang. Skip it if you are a beginner who needs a guided path, if you need reliable romanization (most cards have none or a placeholder), or if you want to learn one consistent dialect, since the deck mixes Chengdu, Chongqing and other regional speech and relies on you to notice the labels.

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alphabet or script deck · A1-B1 · 1,500 notes · no audio · updated February 2024

Characters: heisig's keyword-and-story method, no words or sentences.

A 1,500-card Heisig-order hanzi deck with English mnemonic stories and pinyin: worth studying only if you want to learn to recognize characters by the Remembering the Hanzi method, and nothing more.

Verdict

The ordering is the deck's real strength. Characters are built from earlier ones, and the stories reuse them: #378 brings back 'King Yao the javelin thrower' from #376, and #1130 (遵) leans on the 'Devil Whiskey' image from #1129 (尊). Each card gives you the character, a keyword and pinyin. The weaknesses are just as clear. Every note is a single hanzi, with no words, sentences, example usage or audio, and the sequence ignores frequency. 你 is #799, 要 is #1254 and 新 is #1189, while 吾 ('i (literary)') is #19 and 曰 ('sayeth') is #1499. Only 303 of the top 1,000 words appear, though part of that gap is built in, because a character deck cannot contain compounds like 我们 or 什么. The pinyin is also one reading per character. 行 is given as 'line of business' with háng and 得 as 'must' with děi, which are not the readings you meet most often. Story quality is uneven and sometimes crude, and a few imports left stray quote marks (#223, #1189, #1499).

Use it if you are working through the RSH 1 book, or you like visual mnemonics and plan to learn words, sentences and listening somewhere else. It is a recognition tool for the shapes and core meanings of characters. Skip it if you want a first Mandarin deck that gets you reading or speaking, if you need audio or example sentences, or if you want the most common vocabulary first. In the sample, a reading error is more likely than a wrong character or keyword, so check pinyin against a dictionary for characters you will actually use.

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alphabet or script deck · unclear · 2,359 notes · no audio · updated June 2015

Characters: the seal-script forms of the shuowen radicals, in chinese only.

A seal-script (小篆) deck for the 540 Shuowen radicals plus several thousand derived characters; it is worth studying only if you are reading 《說文解字》, and it is poorly ordered and uneven.

Verdict

The deck's strength is its source material. Each note pairs a regular-script character with its 小篆 image (2,334 of 2,359 notes have one), and the full notes carry pinyin, fanqie, the 部 and the Shuowen entry, for example 斧: 「斫也。从斤父聲。」 The facts I could check are correct. The weaknesses are structural. The default order is scrambled: the opening run is 料, 斬, 處, 釣, 斯, 軸, 鈍, 鈔, 新, and the 金 radical card does not appear until near the end (#2348), long after the characters built on it. About a third of notes (30.8%) are missing fields. The radical cards, such as 「247.齊」 or 「526。了」, have only a character and an image, with no reading or definition. The numbering prefixes are inconsistent (「247.」, 「526。」, 「058。」) and sit in the field that shows on the card front. 京 has its definition split across fields: the fanqie field holds 「象高形。凡京之屬皆从京。」 and the real fanqie is missing. Vocabulary is chosen by radical membership, not usefulness: the deck covers 27% of the top 1,000 Chinese words and 22% of the top 2,000. There are no sentences and no audio, and all explanations are in Classical Chinese.

Use this if you are a Chinese-literate student of paleography, philology or Shuowen studies who already reads Classical Chinese glosses and wants to recognize small seal forms and map them to regular script. It suits a course that follows the tags (部首1-50 through 501-540, plus the weekly 下個學期 tags). Do not use it to learn Chinese vocabulary, reading, grammar or listening. A learner without Classical Chinese will get little from the 解 field, and a beginner has no way to tell which cards are useful. Expect to do setup work before it is pleasant to study.

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mixed · unclear · 223 notes · no audio · updated June 2022

Classical poems to memorize, in chinese only, made for native speakers.

A recitation deck of 223 classical Chinese poems and prose pieces for schoolchildren, worth studying only if you need to memorize the Chinese school-required list and don't mind that it teaches nothing about meaning.

Verdict

The deck is good at one job. Each card gives a numbered title like 「107.《黄鹤楼》」 and the full canonical text with dynasty and author. The text is authentic and almost entirely accurate, and a hide-and-recite template with adjustable odds and color suits memorization. Apart from the two slips below, I found no errors in the sample. It has no translation, annotation, pinyin or audio, so it cannot teach you what the text means. The order is also arbitrary. The first 30 cards put the 383-word 《琵琶行》 and long prose like 《捕蛇者说》 next to 4-line quatrains, and the Front numbers jump (106, 107, 108, 113, 198). The vocabulary is literary and archaic, and the common modern words 你, 这 and 什么 never appear. There are a few repeats and errors: 《雁门太守行》 and 《白雪歌送武判官归京》 each appear twice, 《己亥杂诗》 has 「重拌擞」 where the standard text has 抖擞, and the back of 《渔家傲·秋思》 drops 傲. The hiding script was omitted from what I saw, so I could not check that it works.

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alphabet or script deck · A1-C1 · 3,225 notes · no audio · updated December 2018

Characters: heisig's keyword-and-story method, no words or sentences.

This is a companion deck for Heisig's Remembering Simplified Hanzi books, worth studying only if you own the books and want to learn to write characters from English keywords.

Verdict

The deck's main strength is its ordering. In the sample, each character comes after the parts it is built from: 古 (Ancient) and 明 (Bright) follow 十, 口, 日 and 月, and 唱 (Sing) follows 口 and 昌. Each card therefore adds one new character made of pieces you already know. The ComponentsSearch field lets you pull any character plus its unlearned components out of order, which suits learning characters as you meet them elsewhere. The cards are clean, with a keyword-to-hanzi card, a hanzi-to-keyword card and a Traditional card. The data in the sample looked correct. The weakness is that this is a script deck and nothing else. There are no sentences, no audio, no example words and no grammar. The Story field was empty in the sample, so the mnemonic content lives in the books. Order follows shape, not usefulness. In the sample, the first five tenths of the deck include words from the most common 1,000, while the last five tenths add almost none (0-1% per tenth) and 88-92% of new items are past the top 5,000 or unlisted. Heisig's keywords are memory handles, not meanings: 两 is "Dos", 俩 is "Duo", 姚 is "Yao-2", 娜 is "na", 钧 is "30 catties". The measured gaps in common words (一个, 我们, 没有, 什么) partly reflect the format, since a character deck cannot teach multi-character words, but they show that finishing it does not give you vocabulary. Book 2 cards in the sample also have no pinyin.

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alphabet or script deck · A1 · 98 notes · audio on 100% · updated July 2023

Pronunciation: the syllables of mandarin in ipa, pinyin and zhuyin.

A pinyin, Zhuyin and IPA pronunciation drill with randomized audio for hearing initials, finals, minimal pairs and tones. It is worth studying as a first-weeks ear-training deck, and it is not a vocabulary deck.

Verdict

The deck's strength is its design. Every sound note carries audio (8,655 distinct files). Prompts are plain: 'Which Initial do you hear?' on the spelling cards, and 'Guess the Tone' on the tone cards. The card scripts choose the recording at random, so you cannot learn the deck order instead of the sound. That is the exact problem the author describes. The order follows the textbook path (initials, finals, minimal pairs such as 'zh ch sh' and '-ang -eng', then 30 tone-practice notes), and pinyin, Zhuyin and IPA appear together on the answer. The weaknesses are narrow. The tone block is 30 near-identical notes, each holding about 76 tone-1 and 60 tone-2 recordings plus tone 3 and tone 4 lists, with no step-up in difficulty. The sample shows no neutral-tone set. I found one Zhuyin error: 'dia3' is shown as ㄉㄧˇ, which drops the ㄚ. Everything depends on JavaScript, and the card shows an error message on clients that lack the persistence API. I cannot hear the audio, so judge the recordings yourself.

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alphabet or script deck · unclear · 852 notes · no audio · updated January 2019

Characters: converting simplified to traditional.

A narrow drill deck that teaches the traditional form of 852 characters to someone who already reads simplified; worth studying for that job only, and only if you tidy it a little.

Verdict

The deck does one thing clearly. Each note is one character whose simplified and traditional forms differ, and it gives you two cards: traditional to simplified, pinyin and meaning, then simplified plus pinyin plus meaning to traditional (the writing card). The order runs from common to rare. In the measured data, 68% of the first tenth's words are in the list's top 1,000, and 92% of the last tenth are past rank 5,000 or unlisted. Every note has a stroke-order image. The weak spots are the glosses and the absence of any context. In the sample, 麼 reads 'me from shen me', 嗎 leads with 'morphine; (question tag)', 結 repeats its senses ('knot , sturdy ... ; knot; sturdy; to bear (fruit)'), 誰 reads 'who; who', and 跡 carries a stray '(main version)' line. Several multi-sense strings run long and are not ranked by usefulness, as with 單 ('chieftain; bill , list , form , single'). There is no audio, no example word or sentence, and no grammar, so you never see these characters in use.

Use it if you can already read simplified comfortably and want a fast, structured way to recognize traditional characters, mainly the front half of the deck where the common ones sit. Do not use it as a general Chinese course or as a first deck. It teaches no words, so common characters that are identical in both scripts (的, 是, 在, 我) are absent by design, and the last few hundred notes are rare characters (淵, 岡, 瀟, 靂) that matter much less for everyday reading.

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vocabulary list · unclear · 142 notes · no audio · updated March 2018

Classical chinese vocabulary for native-speaking high school students.

A 142-card glossary of Classical Chinese terms from biographical texts, built for a reader who already knows modern Chinese; it works as a quick review list but is not worth studying as your main material.

Verdict

The deck's strength is its focus. The cards are grouped by tags such as (官职变动), (官员的行为), (时间) and (虚词), and they cover the career and court vocabulary that biographies lean on: 左迁 → 降职, 移病 → 称病辞职, 下车视事 → 官员到职工作, plus the exam ladder 乡试, 会试, 殿试. Most glosses in the sample are short and usable. The weaknesses are structural. No card has a sentence, passage or source text, so a single character such as 去, 行, 报 or 身 appears with only a one-word gloss (去 → 辞官, 报 → 回复) and nothing shows how it is used. The tags are also unreliable: 身 appears under both (行为) and (名词), and 兼署 and 绥辑 are tagged (名词) although they are verbs. The sample also contains real errors: 贳之 → 赫免 (a wrong character), 抗疏 → 抗拒执行, and 儒人 → 妇女 (the standard form is 孺人). The order is by theme, not by difficulty. The sample opens on rare official-title vocabulary, and the last tenth of the deck brings new words at an unusually high rate.

This deck suits you if you are already reading Classical Chinese, such as exam prep for biography passages, and want a checklist of terms to test yourself on, ideally with a textbook or dictionary open to correct the glosses. It does not suit a beginner, anyone who needs to see words in sentences, or anyone who cannot read the Chinese-only explanations. Treat each gloss as a prompt to check, not as settled fact.

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