About ChineseSteps
ChineseSteps is a Chinese learning site for English speakers. It focuses on one thing: making characters look up-able, writable and printable.
Where the data comes from
Character data (stroke counts, radicals, readings, English glosses) is imported from the Unicode Unihan database, which is published under the Unicode License. Words and example sentences are written for this site.
What is verified, and what is not
Pinyin, stroke counts, radicals, English meanings, example words and example sentences are imported and checked. Stroke-order animation is available for the launch set and is derived from Make Me a Hanzi / hanzi-writer-data, which is distributed under the Arphic Public License.
Stroke data licence
The stroke outlines are a derivative work of the Arphic fonts, converted from a 1024 unit, y-up coordinate system to 100 units, y-down for this site. As required by the Arphic Public License, the full licence text is kept at /licenses/ARPHICPL.txt, this modification is documented in the open-source import script, and the derived data remains available under the same licence.
Editorial policy
We do not publish generated filler. If a character has no verified example word or sentence, the page does not claim to have one.
Character data: Unicode Unihan database (Unicode License). Words and example sentences: ChineseSteps.