Inkstone: Learn Chinese
iOS app by Conder Shou. Education · Conder Shou
- Store rating
- 4 / 5
- Store rating count
- 2
- Download price
- Free to download
- In-app purchases
- Unknown
- Version
- 1.2.3
- Listing last refreshed
- 2026-09-17
View the original store listing
Store description excerpt
Inkstone is a Chinese reading app built on the wisdom that China has passed down for generations. Most reading apps write their own material for learners. Inkstone gives you timeless Chinese wisdom: from fables and their idioms, Tang poems, to Li Bai, Zhuangzi, and the strange tales out of the Liaozhai. Every piece comes from a real ancient text, retold in clear modern Chinese at a level you can read. Poems are the exact original. Inkstone is built to guide you through every word, every phrase, and every sentence and its historical and philosophical context. A voice reads every line aloud and pinyin sits above every character. Tap any word to see what it means, hear it on its own, and read how the rest of the library uses it. Every sentence has an English translation a glance away. An "unpack the story" analysis is also paired with every story to provide further context and analysis. You never have to leave the page to look anything up, we take care of it all for you. WHAT YOU ACTUALLY READ 119 texts across fourteen shelves: fables, Tang poems, the philosophers, histories, strange tales, and street talk. We ship 50+ handpicked stories on the 1st of every month. Li Bai looking at moonlight and mistaking it for frost. Zhuangzi's frog at the bottom of the well, certain the sky is small. A scholar in a Tang ghost story who should not have opened that door. The poems are the original text, character for character, from 唐诗三百首 and 全唐诗. The prose is retold in clear modern Chinese at a level you can read, and the source is always named. You'll know when you are in 聊斋志异 and when you are in 搜神记. This curated collection consists of stories that lasted two thousand years. They're worth reading and analyzing, over and over again. WHY THEY LASTED Every story comes with an interpretation, what it means, which single word carries the whole thing, what scholars have argued about for centuries, and who argued it. "Night Thoughts" is twenty characters, yet it has a multitude of layers of meaning. We explain them: why 疑 is the hinge, why 霜 puts autumn and age into a poem that refers to neither, and why the most famous line in Chinese poetry may not be the one Li Bai wrote. HOW WE GUIDE YOUR READING EXPERIENCE • A female and male voice for every story. Each word and sentence translated and lighting up as you progress through the story. • Slow the reading down, loop a line, or step through a story sentence by sentence • Every word has its own recording in both voices, so you can hear individual words and phrases alone • Beautiful background music to accompany your reading • Four levels of pinyin, including a smart level that marks only the words above your grade • Tap a word for its definitions, its other readings, and how often this book uses it • An English translation for every sentence without having you leave the story • Simplified and traditional characters supported • Save a word and it comes back before you forget it • Works offline. The whole li
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