The handwriting practice worksheets are based on the latest PDF specification. Some old versions of PDF viewers may not be able to view the PDF files. The message will disappear if you upgrade your Acrobat Reader (or other PDF viewers) to the latest version.

The quickest way is go to Chinese Character Worksheet page, enter (or copy and paste) some Chinese characters to the character box and then press the Generate Worksheets button. Optionally, before you generate the worksheets, you can click the Customize Definitions button to provide your own definitions and Pinyin for the characters.

You can also provide a title for the worksheets. The title will be printed on the top of each worksheet page.

The character worksheets are highly customizable. Even though the sensible default settings work for most of the cases, you can click the Show Settings to bring up the Worksheet Settgings view and tweak the worksheet settings to meet your needs. You need to click the Apply button to apply the changes before you click the Close button to close the view. The Reset link on the worksheet settings panel allows you to reset the worksheet generation settings to the default values.

To provide the best performance for the users who like to generate worksheets for a large number of characters at a time, we have revamped the worksheet generation process to be a fast, easy-to-use two-click process. The first click starts the worksheet generation process. The second click tells the system what you plan to do with the generated worksheets. You can elect to save them to a PDF file or show them in a separate browser window. If you are generating worksheets for a large number of characters at a time, it is much faster to save the worksheets in a PDF file and then open the file with your favorite PDF viewer, such as Adobe Reader or Foxit PDF viewer. Most of the users generate worksheets for a few characters at a time. In thise case, the PDF file is relatively small and you can conveniently view it in a separate browser window.

Note that this site uses a pop-up window to display the generated worksheets. If your browser is configured to block pop-ups, you need to allow http://www.archchinese.com and http://service.archchinese.com to open pop-ups.You need to register and sign in to generate worksheets with stroke sequences, Pinyin, definitions and radicals.

When a character or word is displayed, there is a paper-plus-sign icon next to it. Click the icon to add the character or word to My Vocab List. My Vocab List is a temporary vocab list that allows you to manually create or grab vocabulary from the dictionary, example word and sentence repositories. The My Vocab List is shown on the right hand side of the page when you are on the following pages:

• Stroke Animation and Dictionary
• Chinese Character Worksheets
• Word Worksheet Maker
• Printable Word Flashcard Maker
• Chinese Word Details
• Chinese Flashcards

Click the Tools button to view the tools you can use with the vocabulary in the list.

Your My Vocab List is automatically saved on Google cloud. So your data is always safe and secure. Once you are done with the list, press the Save button to add it to your Saved Vocab Lists, which maintains all the vocab lists you have created or worked on.

On the up-right corner of the page, there is a Sign In link when you are on the Stroke Animation and Dictionary, Chinese Worksheets or Chinese Flashcards page. Before you hit the Generate Worksheets button, click the Sign In link to enter your member serial key. Noe that your member serial key is case-sensitive. After you sign in, the system remembers you for a certain period of time. You need to make sure to sign out if you are using a public computer in libraries, cafes or schools.

Once you have signed in with your member serial key, you can create your own, easy-to-remember sign-in credentials via the My Account page. The My Account page is available after you sign in

Yes, you can provide your own English (or other language) definitions and Pinyin for any characters in the system. On the Chinese Worksheets page, the Customize Definitions button allows you to preview and then customize the definitions and pinyin for the characters in the character box.

You can also customize the definition and Pinyin of a character when you are viewing its stroke order animation on the Stroke Animation and Dictionary page. Click the paper-with-a-pencil icon below the animated character to bring up the customization panel. After you edit the definitions and Pinyin. click the Save button to save and apply the customization.

The customized definitions apply to both worksheet generation and character animations. The system remembers the customizations you have made on your machine, so you do not have to do it again.

By default, the English definitions and the radical are listed in the head character box, as shown in here. Because the worksheet character boxes are small, the worksheet generator will ignore an English definition if it is too long. To handle long English definitions and support other languages, such as Russian and German, a new worksheet style has been introduced. Intead of showing them in the head character, the English definitions are listed in a separate grid on top of the stroke sequence diagram. To use this style, select Show English definitions in a separate grid on the Chinese Worksheets settings.

If your browser is configured to block pop-up windows, you need to configure it to allow pop-up windows from http://www.archchinese.com and http://service.archchinese.com. The generated worksheet will be shown in a separate pop-up window. If you have installed third party applications, including browser add-ons and extensions, to block pop-ups, you may need to check the vendor documentation to allow pop-up windows from the two sites.

You need to configure your browser to remember history. If you are using FireFox, you can set it with the following steps:

1. Click the Tools menu
2. Under Tools menu, click the Options menu item to bring up the Options pop-up.
3. On the Privacy page, make sure it is configured to Remember History or Use Custom Settings for History

If after the above steps, the system still logs you out, try the following steps to make sure your browser's Flash plug-in can save your log-in information on your PC:

1. Go to the Stroke Order Animation page
2. Right mouse click the animated character
3. On the Flash Player context menu, click Settings
4. On the Flash Settings pop-up, make sure the local storage is greater than 0. I would strongly recommend to make it at least 100kb.
5. Hit the Close button to close the pop-up

You can learn more about Flash Player local storage setting from Adobe.

On the Chinese English dictionary page, As an integral part of the Chinese character animator, the chinese character etymology explorer is shown below the animated character. The character etymology explorer shows the composition of the character. It allows you to drill down into the character components one level at a time. This feature can help you understand what components a character is made up from and how characters are related to each other. When a character is animated, the first level component(s) and radical are displayed automatically. Radicals are displayed as in blue and non-radical components are displayed in black. If the component can be further decomposed, you can click the component (or the plus icon) to expand it and view the components of the component. The Pinyin and English definitions are shown next to the component or radical. You can also double click a component or radical in the explorer to view more detailed information, such as stroke order, character structure and pronunciation, etc.

With the following 3 steps, you can generate nicely formatted Chinese character worksheets quickly:

1. Go to the Worksheets page
2. Enter (or copy and paste) Chinese characters to the character box
3. Hit the Generate Worksheets button

Both the Chinese character definitions and worksheet styles are customizable. Click the Show Settings button to view and custom the worksheet format and style. Click the Customize Definitions to provide your own definitions for the characters.

If you leave the character box blank, the system will generate a general-purpose blank character worksheet for you. Note that you can still customize page layout, grid size and style, etc. You can even allow the system to generate a blank worksheet on which only the bottom half of the page printed writing grids, leaving the top half of the page blank so that young kids may use it to draw pictures or anything they like. Note, to generate this type of worksheets, you must enable the option Draw writing grids only on the bottom half of the page (applies to blank worksheets only) and blank out the characters in the character box.

For performance reasons, you can print max 50 characters at a time. If you need to generate more characters at a time, you can sign up as a premium member. Among other premium member only features, you can generate worksheets for more than 100 characters at a time.

Unlike other online Chinese English dictionaries, our system has built-in intelligence to help you find the Chinese characters, words and collocations. With our unique, powerful search algorithm, you can look up the Chinese English dictionary by:

• Pinyin, with or without tones, support both tone marks and tone notations
• Character radicals
• Character components
• English definitions, including a single letter
• Chinese Characters
• Chinese phrases
• English and Chinese
• English and Pinyin
• Chinese and Pinyin
• Chinese, English and Pinyin

a. Pinyin
To look up a character by Pinyin, you can use Pinyin with tone notations, e.g. wo3, or Pinyin with tone marks, e.g. wǒ. If you are not sure about the tone, you can use fuzzy Pinyin (Pinyin without tones), e.g. wo. When you use Pinyin with tone notations, use v for ü, e.g. lv3 for lǚ, and the number 5 for the neutral tone, e.g. ma5.

Similarly, when you look up a Chinese word or phrase with Pinyin, you can use Pinyin with tone notations(e.g. bei3jing1 or bei3 jing1), Pinyin with tone marks(e.g. běijīng or běi jīng), or fuzzy Pinyin(e.g. beijing). Note when you use fuzzy Pinyin to look up words or phrases, make sure the Pinyin is one English word (no spaces between the Pinyin of the individal characters).

b. Character Radicals
To look up a character by character radicals, you can bring up the Chinese Radical Table and click the radical. For example, radical 土 and 刀(刂). To make it easy for you to locate a radical, the radicals on the radical table can be sorted by radical number, radical stroke count, Pinyin or definition of the radical. All the Chinese characters with the radical will show up on a separate page and they can be grouped by stroke count, Pinyin or usage frequency. You can move your mouse over the character to show the Pinyin and definition of the character. Alternatively, check the show Pinyin and English option to display the Pinyin and English next to the character. Click the character to view the character details and click the Pinyin to hear the pronunciation



If you know a character and the character has the radical you are going to use to look up other characters, you can show the character on the Stroke Animation and Dictionary page and then click the characters with same radical link to look up the characters with the radical.

c. Character Components
Like Chinese character radicals, character components are the building blocks of Chinese characters. There are about 1,000 unique character components in the standard Chinese character set of mainland China. Most of the components are also standalone Chinese characters, but some of them cannot even been displayed on your computer or tablet because they are not included in the unicode character set.



d. English
To look up a character or word by English, simply enter an English word or phrase, for example, school or pay attention to, to the search box and click the Search button.

e. Chinese Characters
To view the details of a single Chinese character, you can simply enter (or copy and paste) it into the search box and hit the Search button. For example, 你 and 好. In addition to the character details, the example words and sentences will be shown below the animated character.

f. Chinese Words or Phrases
If you are looking for the English definition or example sentences of a particular phrase or character compound, you can simply enter (or copy and paste) it into the search box and then hit the Search button. For example, 动物园 and 恋爱关系

g. English and Chinese
You can mix English and Chinese characters or word in your search query. The English and Chinese can be separated by a comma, space or asterisk. For example, 电,computer, 电*computer or 电 computer.

h. English and Pinyin
You can mix English and Pinyin in your search query. English and Pinyin can be separated by a comma or asterisk. For example, apple,ji1 and fried*fan4. In addition to tone notations, you can also use tone marks in the Pinyin. For example, apple,sī

i. Chinese and Pinyin
Again, Chinese and Pinyin can be separated by a comma or asterisk and, for Pinyin, you can use either tone notations or tone marks. For example 欢,xi3 and 欢*xǐ,

j. English, Chinese and Pinyin
You can use a combination of English, Chinese and Pinyin in your search query, as long as they are separated by a comma or asterisk. For example, chinese,喜欢,cha2 and 好*teacher*ta1

This system runs on all major browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox , Safari, Opera and Google Chrome. The system works on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Minimum screen resolution is 1024X768. If you can watch YouTube videos on your browser, you should be able to run this tool. Since the worksheet PDF files are based on latest PDF specification, you may need to upgrade your Acrobat Reader (or other PDF viewers) to the newer versions.

This system also runs well on tablets and smart phones.

After you import the characters or phrases you want to study, get a cup of coffee and then click the Movie button on the Imported Characters panel. The system automatically demonstrates the stroke order, along with pronunciation, English definitions, stroke count, measure words (if any), radical, component(s), and similar characters, etc., for the imported characters. You can adjust the intervals between characters via the Settings panel.

Similarly, you can watch the animations for all the studied characters after you have studied them. You can do that by clicking the Movie button on the toolbar of the character animator. Alternatively, you can click the Movie button on the Studied Characters panel.

Yes. you will notice minor discrepancies when you compare textbooks from mainland China and Taiwan. In this system, the stroke orders for simplified Chinese characters are strictly based on 《现代汉语通用字笔顺规范》 (Modern Chinese Commonly Used Character Stroke Order Standard) published by 国家语委和中华人民共和国新闻出版署(China National Language And Character Working Committee and General Administration of Press and Publication of the Peoples' Republic of China) in 1997. For traditional Chinese characters, which are used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, Arch Chinese follows the standard issued by Taiwan Ministry of Education.

On the Chinese Character Worksheets page, click the Show Settings button to bring up the Worksheet Settings view. At the bottom of the Worksheet General setting section, you will see

12. Show repetitive characters in the worksheet.

By default, it is unchecked. Check it and click the Apply button to apply the change. After that, all the repetitive characters will show up on the worksheets.

All your vocab lists are safely stored on Google Cloud, even afer your membership expires. That way, when you sign up again, with a single mouse click, you can transfer all the vocabulary lists you created before to your new account. Here are the detailed steps:

1. Sign in with your current member serial key or email and password if you have created your own sign-in credentials.
2. After signing in, you should see a My Account link on the header of the page. Click the link to bring up the My Account view.
3. On the bottom of the My Account view, you will see an Old Serial Key input box and a Transfer Vocab Lists button. Enter (or copy and paste) your old member serial key to the box and hit the Transfer Vocab Lists button. (Note your old member serial key is case-sensitive and it can be used to transfer vocab lists only. The account associated with your old member serial key is inactive so you cannot use the old serial key to sign in).
4. Log out and log in again to view your updated vocab lists, which are listed on the right side bar of the page.

More than one users have asked the same question. Here are the steps you can get around this issue:

1. Right click on the PDF to bring up the Google Chrome context menu.
2. On the context menu, click "Print..." to bring up the Print configuration page.
3. On the Google Chrome Print configuration page, change Destination to "Save as PDF".
4. Hit the "Save" button

It is straightforward. Here are the steps:

1. Go to Worksheets page http://www.archchinese.com/how_to_write_chinese.html
2. Enter (or copy and paste) Chinese characters into the character box.
3. Optionally, click the Customize Definition button to review and edit the definitions and Pinyin of the characters.
4. Press the "Create Flashcards" button.

The flashcard PDF file will be shown in a separate window instantly. If your browser is configured to block pop-ups, make sure it allows pop-ups from www.archchinese.com and service.archchinese.com.

You will get that message when your membership is exipred or you have entered an incorrect serial key. You can restart your browser and try it again. Instead of typing your serial key to the serial key box, it is strongly recommended to copy and paste it into the box. Note that the serial keys are case-sensitive. If the problem persists, contact our tech support.

You cannot sign in because the desktop version of Arch Chinese uses Flash, which is not supported on iOS devices, such as iPads and iphones.

For mobile devices, please use the mobile version of Arch Chinese. Unlike the desktop version, no Flash is required. The mobile version is completely redesigned and optimized for iOS, Android, Windows and BlackBerry devices. All the features available in the desktop version will be eventually implemented in the mobile version. Besides the sleek Chinese stroke order animations, powerful Chinese-English character and word dictionaries, the mobile version features handwriting recognition, active recall and a spaced repetition system to help Chinese learners to master the language quickly.

You can sign in on one of the following pages:

• Chinese English dictionary page - http://www.archchinese.com/chinese_english_dictionary.html
• Chinese Character Worksheet page - http://www.archchinese.com/how_to_write_chinese.html
• Chinese Word and Handwritting Practice page - http://www.archchinese.com/chinese_phrase_handout.html
• Chinese Bingo Card Generator page - http://www.archchinese.com/bingo_card_generator.html
• Printable Chinese Paper Flashcard Maker page - http://www.archchinese.com/chineseflashcardmaker.html
• Online Chinese Flashcard page - http://www.archchinese.com/chineseflashcards.html

Yes, once you becomes a member, you can generate worksheets for any characters defined in the national standard character set of China and over 7,000 traditional Chinese characters that used in Taiwan and HongKong.

The system has an anti-bot mechanism to fend off bots and other malicious attacks. You have been mistakenly identified by the system as a bot. Send us email and we will unlock it quickly. If you are a registered member, please sign in. A registered user will never be blocked.

To provide a good user experience to all the users, we have put a cap to avoid users to generate unusual large amount of worksheets in a short period of time. That means, unless you have generated worksheets for thousands of characters, you should not see that message. If you did get this message, let us know. We will resolve this issue for you quickly.

Example words and sentences are listed below the Chinese character details panel. Because we have a large example word and sentence repository for frequently used characters, you can use the Prev and Next buttons to get additional examples that aren't shown on the screen. All Chinese characters in the example words and sentences are hyperlinked.

Yes. This is one of the great features of the Arch Chinese learning tool. You can select a character from

• Search results
• Imported characters
• Studied characters
• Example phrases
• Example sentences
• Characters with a Pinyin syllable
• Characters with a radical
• Characters on the character decomposition explorer

Once a character is selected, the animation will start automatically. You can click the character in the center box to write the character stroke-by-stroke interactively and listen to stroke names. When all the strokes for the character are written, it will start over again.

Alternatively, you can click the Stroke Forward button below the animator to write the strokes interactively. After the character is written, the system plays the pronunciation of the character automatically.

As shown in the Chinese character detail screenshot, you can click the Export button below the animated Chinese character to export the character stroke sequences to a PNG or JPEG image. By default, the image is in JPEG format. If you want the image to be in PNG format, click the Settings icon at the top of the animated Chinese character to bring up the Settings view and change the stroke sequence image format to PNG.