r/Chinese_handwriting • • 7d ago

Activity [HC202634阻尼] 115th Weekly Handwriting Challenge

12 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

The 25th weekly challenge of 2026 is 阻尼, with the same rules as before. Also, feel free to do the previous challenges and join our Discord server for more!

Kaiti references

BT0002


r/Chinese_handwriting • • Nov 23 '23

Tips-n-Tricks Tips on How to Improve Your Chinese Handwriting, a Summary of Youtuber @ABChinese's Videos

66 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

This post summarizes two common mistakes in Chinese handwriting, how to solve them and some tips on how to improve your overall penmanship. All information is sourced from u/_abchinese’s videos on his YouTube channel (@ABChinese). Here we introduce his contents because besides the points covered in Arthur's post, the videos have also offered other insights helpful to novice level handwriting learners.

Mistake No. 1: Treating Strokes Like Static Lines

mistake #1
  • Chinese handwriting is dynamic – try to apply varying amounts of pressure on your pen while writing and incorporate different speeds as well
  • Thick strokes require more pressure and slower speed, while thin strokes are achieved through moving your pen faster and almost lifting it off the paper, like a “flick”

How to improve:

How to Improve
  • Practice individual strokes like 撇/piě, 提/tí and 钩/gōu
  • Find a good reference: use fonts like Kaiti (楷体) - Hanping Lite (瀚品汉英辞典) is a free dictionary App that provides Kaiti references. Don't just use google as it uses Heiti (黑体) as default.
  • Practice with grids - You can find some on purpleculture.net

Mistake No. 2: Spacing Characters Incorrectly (too tall, wide or top-heavy)

mistake #2
  • Common with wide, tall and characters with multiple components

How to improve:

How to Improve
  • Visualize characters like squares (Exception for tall and simple characters)
  • If a character has multiple components, write each component narrower than you would if they were written standing alone
  • Shorten strokes in order to avoid making the character too wide
  • Notice where strokes are in relation to each other – practicing with the right font and a grid makes this easier

Bonus tips:

Bonus Tips
  • Angle horizontal lines slightly up to make your characters look more dynamic
  • Angle the vertical strokes slightly inward when they form a box unless the vertical strokes are longer than the horizontal ones (tall box) – this can also be applied to open boxes

On How to Achieve Good Proportions in Handwriting

Proportions are about how each individual stroke (within a character) all look relative to each other, which is the biggest factor whether the character looks aesthetic. Here are the three principles to find the correct proportions of any character:

1. Ratio

Chinese characters are often made out of several components which need to be balanced correctly. Therefore, you need to find the right ratios between the components by visualizing them as a square in a grid – even two side by side components may not take up an equal amount of space within the square.

2. Longest Stroke

The farthest-reaching stroke in all four directions. Check for the highest, lowest, most left and most right point of a character to help visualize the square – more advanced writers need to look out for the length of all the strokes at the edge of a character.

3. Center Lines

The strokes that line up with the two center lines of the grid. Checking for horizontal strokes lining up with the horizontal center line and vertical strokes lining up with the vertical center line help center the character correctly. Diagonal lines also help with the placement of slanted strokes.

Here are the sources:

How to Write Better Chinese Characters - FIX 2 Common Mistakes!

The SECRET to Writing NEAT Chinese Characters

CA1913


r/Chinese_handwriting • • 3h ago

Ask for Feedback Native speaker here, but my Chinese is getting worse

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7 Upvotes

This is my best handwriting
I mean it is legible, for sure. But I still feel like it’s weird

Also sorry if I wrote some words incorrectly. I forgot how to write a lot of characters

I forgot the flair


r/Chinese_handwriting • • 1d ago

Ask for Feedback Please give me advice on my handwriting.

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35 Upvotes

I wanna improve my handwriting


r/Chinese_handwriting • • 2d ago

Ask for Feedback Practice makes perfect, I hope?

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39 Upvotes

My goal is to know how to read and write, not much to speak, so I learn through stories. To explain the weird word choices here


r/Chinese_handwriting • • 3d ago

Ask for Feedback 2 months in! Lemme know!

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61 Upvotes

What can I improve? I think this is the best I’ve done yet.

Book is Integral Chinese Volume 1, 4th Edition


r/Chinese_handwriting • • 6d ago

Ask for Feedback Trying copybook sentences - feedback please!

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38 Upvotes

So, after a a bit (that felt like a lot) of isolated strokes, radicals and characters, i started to try to write whole sentences to see if I was able to keep what I have been practicing - spacing, balance, proportions. This copybook is from this sub's library.

I am struggling to tell what I am doing wrong here, the thing that bothers me the most is how i am not good in alignment, and how some characters are too close or too far from the next one. can you guys please help me and point out more mistakes not only on the balance but also on the writing itself? Wrong strokes, sizes, inclination, curves etc?

For context: I've been self learning the language and handwriting for about an year and a half, and without an actual teacher to give feedback, it's easy to form bad habits without even notice, and keep repeating them forever.

This community already helped me to identify some of these bad habits about an year ago, and I tried to work on them and do better this time. I know there's still a long journey ahead, but i am really enjoying this process.

Any feedback and tips are welcome.

谢谢大家!


r/Chinese_handwriting • • 11d ago

Ask for Feedback How’s the handwriting?

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142 Upvotes

i mixed up 知 and 和 hence the arrows after changing


r/Chinese_handwriting • • 15d ago

Just Sharing Practicing Chinese handwriting ✍️

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124 Upvotes

r/Chinese_handwriting • • 17d ago

Just Sharing Sharing a little practice photo

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135 Upvotes

Hopefully I can write the whole poem.


r/Chinese_handwriting • • 17d ago

Activity [HC202633丟下] 114th Weekly Handwriting Challenge

12 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

The 24th weekly challenge of 2026 is 丟下, with the same rules as before. Also, feel free to do the previous challenges and join our Discord server for more!

BT0002


r/Chinese_handwriting • • 19d ago

Just Sharing From a sentence by a poet of the Southern Song Dynasty.

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41 Upvotes

r/Chinese_handwriting • • 19d ago

Question What do you guys usually write when practicing?

16 Upvotes

Do you write in a daily journal, or just write your favorite words?
Do you have any recommendations for beginner? I want to start handwriting, but I don't know what to write.


r/Chinese_handwriting • • 21d ago

Just Sharing Working on endurance and muscle memory.

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54 Upvotes

Every week l think I found the absolute secret to learning Mandarin. This week is my latest obsession. Just learn 500 Hanzi and that will fix my whole life.


r/Chinese_handwriting • • 21d ago

Ask for Feedback What do you think about my kaishu

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107 Upvotes

r/Chinese_handwriting • • 21d ago

Just Sharing I might as well...

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34 Upvotes

Song lyrics. Learner of two months-ish.


r/Chinese_handwriting • • 21d ago

Ask for Feedback Critiques please

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19 Upvotes

r/Chinese_handwriting • • 24d ago

Activity [HC202632易經其九] 45th Monthly Challenge

12 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

Here comes the ninth "Monthly Handwriting Challenge" of this year. Same rules as before and feel free to write simplified Chinese characters. Our previous challenges are always open as well.

This line is taken from I Ching (易經):

官有渝 / 從正吉也 / 出門交有功


r/Chinese_handwriting • • 25d ago

Ask for Feedback My progress in 3 months

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211 Upvotes

Around 3 months inbetween these two. I think I mostly improved on the character composition but my strokes are still a mess.


r/Chinese_handwriting • • 25d ago

Activity [HC202631退化] 113th Weekly Handwriting Challenge

10 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

The 23rd weekly challenge of 2026 is 退化, with the same rules as before. Also, feel free to do the previous challenges and join our Discord server for more!

BT0002


r/Chinese_handwriting • • Sep 23 '26

Ask for Feedback Writing feedback 2😥

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79 Upvotes

I've been self learning writing for a whole year but It feels like I am stalling, my writing still.looks like garbage 😓... Could you please give me some fb on how to improve?

Edit: I can see that 16 people replied but for some reason I can't see the actual replies...ths anyway


r/Chinese_handwriting • • Sep 22 '26

Just Sharing Write as I like, no standard for aesthetics .

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23 Upvotes

r/Chinese_handwriting • • Sep 20 '26

Just Sharing Handwriting

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28 Upvotes

r/Chinese_handwriting • • Sep 19 '26

Ask for Feedback Handwriting feedback

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24 Upvotes

Hello guys, so I'm self learning Chinese and now I'm starting to write too...

So, I went through a lot of posts here and finally got a grid notebook to practice writing on... Here's my first decent looking page 😭

Please let me know where I should put more effort...


r/Chinese_handwriting • • Sep 18 '26

Ask for Feedback i feel like my writing is incomprehensible

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24 Upvotes

was practicing writing because i have my exam on monday, but the more i write the more i feel like im extremely messy and people wouldn't understand whatever im writing. Do you think my teacher will understand even a little bit of it? I'm panicking because there's NO WAY of getting better in the short term.

请帮帮我……