Hanzi Lab
Characters aren’t pictures — they’re built from about 200 reusable parts. Meet the 40 that matter most, then watch them come alive stroke by stroke.
How characters work 汉字逻辑
English words are built from letters; Chinese characters are built from radicals — about 200 reusable parts. 氵 makes water things, 扌 makes hand actions, 讠 makes speech. Learn the 40 below and most characters stop being drawings and start being sentences: 河流 = “water-river + water-flow”, 说 = “speech + …”.
1 · The 40 radicals 部首
Click a radical to see its high-frequency character family. Glyphs like 氵 扌 讠 are the “shorthand” forms radicals take inside characters.
2 · Character family 字族
High-frequency characters sharing this radical, sorted by real usage. Click any character to watch it being written — or to practice the strokes yourself.
3 · Stroke practice 笔顺练习
Write it with your mouse or finger — strokes are graded on order and direction. Green = correct, orange = try again. The panel under the writer also breaks the character into its parts: click any part to watch its strokes.