Bihua is a webapp that helps you practice the manual writing of Chinese characters.

To practice, click on the 'insert hanzi' field and use the keyboard to type the hanzi you want to practice. Then click 'ok' and start practicing! You can also use our vocabulary lists to learn more new words.

You have several options to draw on the screen and practice handwriting:

• A
  You can use your finger if you're on a mobile device;
• B
  You can use the mouse if you're on a computer or laptop;
• C
  You can use the trackpad if you're on a laptop;
• D
  You can use pens like Apple Pencil, Wacom, or any digital pen on your tablet or digitizer.

You can adjust the stroke thickness using the blue slider in the toolbox. You can also change the stroke color by clicking on the different available colors or choose any color by clicking 'more colors'.

If you made a mistake and want to undo a stroke, click 'undo'. To clear the entire drawing or the hanzi animation, click 'clear' or 'clear all'.

When you finish your drawing, you can save it in PNG format and send it to your teacher and classmates—or post it on your social media as a record of your study process. Just click 'save' 🙂.

In CANVAS mode, you can draw freely, following the character's animation. There are over 9,000 characters for you to practice writing. You can also make annotations on the hanzi and save your drawing.

In GUIDE mode, Bihua guides you through writing stroke by stroke. If you make multiple mistakes, we'll show you a hint to encourage your study process. Guide Mode also displays the total number of strokes for the character you're practicing and counts how many correct and incorrect strokes you made.

Bihua comes with Chinese-English and Chinese-Portuguese dictionaries, so you can understand the meanings of the characters you're practicing. You can also listen to the pronunciation of words and characters in Mandarin by clicking the sound icon. Bihua also provides the phonetic representation (pinyin) of words and the HSK levels (both old and new versions) to which a word or hanzi belongs.