Essays
Does Relying on Pinyin Keyboards Erode Your Chinese?
Worried that typing everything with a pinyin keyboard is eroding your Chinese handwriting and connection to it? The effect is real, and reversible. Here is how.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Playbooks
A Collaborative Whiteboard for Practising Chinese Together?
Practising characters with a partner or tutor on a shared whiteboard sounds great, but writing-practice apps are single-user. Here is the honest state and a workable setup.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Essays
A CLI That Gives You a Random Hanzi to Trace Daily
A daily-character CLI is a fun, easy build and a fine habit nudge, but a terminal can show a character, not grade your writing. Recognition is not recall. Here is the honest split.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Playbooks
Turning Passive Anki Cards Into Real Writing Ability
Your Anki sentence cards built recognition but not writing? Convert that passive knowledge into production by writing those characters from memory. Here is how.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Playbooks
Chinese Writing for Corporate Language Retention
Companies want employees to retain the Chinese they train, and writing helps retention. Here is how to use writing practice for that, and an honest note on team features.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Playbooks
Handwritten Hanzi Wedding Invitations: a Guide
Want to hand-write custom Chinese wedding invitations? Here is how to learn the names and ceremonial phrases, verify them, and write them beautifully.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Essays
Custom Font Upload to Tracing Paths: What Is Realistic
Turning an uploaded font into traceable stroke paths is harder than it sounds: font outlines are not stroke skeletons. Here is what is realistic, and why tracing is a scaffold.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Essays
A Trace-to-Unlock Daily Hanzi Lock Screen: Good Idea?
A lock screen that makes you trace a daily character before unlocking is a clever habit nudge, but tracing to unlock is recognition, and it gets gamed. A from-memory prompt works better.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Playbooks
Practicing for Rigorous Chinese Stroke and Structure Tests
Preparing for a rigorous Chinese program that tests stroke order precisely? Precise handwriting is built by from-memory practice with structure feedback.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Playbooks
Hand Fatigue Writing Chinese: Why It Happens and How to Cut It
Hand fatigue during long Chinese writing is mostly effort from non-automatic characters and a tense grip, not a mystery for a diagnostic to track. Build automaticity and the fatigue drops.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Playbooks
Diagnosing Speed vs Accuracy in Character Recall
Are you slow because you are unsure, or fast but wrong? Here is how to diagnose the speed-accuracy balance in your character recall and what to fix.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Essays
Pinyin vs Bopomofo Typing: the Muscle-Memory Myth
Pinyin and bopomofo keyboards build different typing muscle memory, but neither builds character handwriting. Here is why typing of either kind is not writing.
Lawrence Arya··5 min