Du Chinese is a Mandarin reading and listening app with more than 3,000 readings, and every story is recorded by its team. On Reddit (r/ChineseLanguage), Du Chinese learners look elsewhere for different reasons. One reader at about HSK 5 had finished everything at their level and wanted more. Another wanted more stories at the Elementary level. A third liked writing characters by hand and wished they could practice that alongside stories.
Each section below answers one of those wishes, and Du Chinese has the first card.
What Du Chinese Does
Du Chinese
Du Chinese suits learners who want stories and articles written for each level. Its graded stories retell Chinese classics, like the oath of the Peach Garden from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, using a set number of characters. It also links with Pleco, Skritter, and Hack Chinese.
- Read at six levels, from Newbie to Master.
- Tap a word for pinyin, its meaning, and a grammar tip without leaving the story.
- Switch between Simplified and Traditional characters.
- Flashcards
- Traditional characters
- Zhuyin
MobileWeb
Custom Lessons Made for You
Bubblegum
For serious learners, Bubblegum is the best app to learn Chinese. You learn from Chinese you can mostly understand, which is called comprehensible input.
In Bubblegum, Poppy, your AI tutor, writes Mandarin lessons for you, so there's always something new at your level. 
Taiwan Mandarin has its own lessons, with zhuyin and Taiwan readings.
The trade-off is that Bubblegum is not a writing course or a person to talk with. For practice writing characters by hand, Skritter below is the fit.
- Poppy writes a new Mandarin lesson whenever you want one, at your level.
- Choose what each lesson is about, from tea to train travel.
- Ask Poppy what a grammar word like 了 is doing in a sentence.
- Saved words return in later lessons through Regenerative Review™.
- Clear, expressive AI voices read every lesson aloud, with a different voice for each speaker.
- You can't bring in a news article or a book of your own.
- A new custom lesson costs us real money to make, so your first one is free, and Bubblegum Pro gives you unlimited custom lessons. The lesson library is free for everyone, because we believe everyone should be able to learn.
- Regenerative Review™
- Teaches Pinyin
- Traditional characters
- Zhuyin
Mobile
Read the News at Your Level
The Chairman's Bao
The Chairman's Bao calls itself a news-based graded reader, and its site counts more than 11,000 lessons. Topics run from a fruit seller who feeds durians to sheep at Level 1 to China's job market at Level 5.
- Pick from news-based lessons in seven levels.
- Answer reading and listening questions after each text.
- Tap a word to look it up and save it for flashcards.
- Flashcards
- Traditional characters
MobileWeb
Practice Writing Characters
Skritter
Skritter teaches you to write Chinese characters, and Japanese ones too. Hard characters come back for review more often.
- Write characters on the screen and get graded as you go.
- Feedback on each stroke shows where a character went wrong.
- Study lists from hundreds of textbooks, or make your own.
- Flashcards
MobileWeb
Look Up Words in Anything You Read
Pleco
Pleco is a Chinese dictionary for iPhone, iPad, and Android. Its Document Reader lets you tap words in a text to look them up, and its App Store page marks which tools, like the camera lookup, are paid add-ons.
- Pleco comes with two free built-in dictionaries.
- Draw a character on the screen to look it up.
- Search by characters, pinyin, or English in one search box.
- Flashcards
- Traditional characters
- Zhuyin
Mobile
Other Apps We Looked At (4)
- HelloChineseA full Mandarin course based on HSK levels, with more than 1,000 graded stories.
- maayotShort lessons written by its teachers, where you read, listen, then write and speak about the text.
- ReadleGraded stories and news in seven languages, from HSK 1 to HSK 5 for Chinese.
- LingQA library of Chinese lessons, and an importer that turns pages you find into lessons.
Common Questions
Which Du Chinese alternative should a beginner choose?
If you are serious about learning Chinese, start with Bubblegum. Poppy writes lessons at your level about things you like. Or start with HelloChinese if you'd like a full course with a pinyin lesson for newbies, or with Du Chinese's Newbie course, Anne Arrives in China.
Where can I find more to read at HSK 5 and above?
The Chairman's Bao has seven levels and keeps adding new articles. In Bubblegum, Poppy can write a new lesson at an advanced level whenever you ask.
Is Bubblegum free?
Yes. The lesson library is free for everyone, because we believe everyone should be able to learn. It holds lessons that other learners asked Poppy for. A new custom lesson costs us real money to make, so your first one is free, and Bubblegum Pro gives you unlimited custom lessons.
Sources
- Du Chinese: Learn Chinese with stories (3,000+ readings, 80+ graded stories)
- Du Chinese: App Store listing (Simplified and Traditional, Pleco and Skritter integration)
- r/ChineseLanguage: Do Du Chinese and Chairman Bao have enough HSK5-6 content for 1-year/lifetime sub?
- r/ChineseLanguage: About du chinese
- r/ChineseLanguage: Wish Skritter and Du Chinese would have a child
- The Chairman's Bao: News-based graded reader (11,094 lessons, 7 levels)
- Skritter: Learn to write Chinese and Japanese characters
- Pleco: Chinese dictionary features
- Pleco: App Store listing (free dictionaries, paid add-ons marked $)
- HelloChinese: App Store listing (1000+ graded stories)
- maayot: Chinese lessons to read, listen, speak and write
- Readle: Graded stories, HSK 1 to HSK 5 for Chinese
- LingQ: Learn Chinese from real content
- Du Chinese
- Bubblegum
- The Chairman's Bao
- Skritter
Checked on October 14, 2026 against each app's own pages.
