The First 1000 Reference Sheets

The book you reach for when you want to know more than the meaning.

A character isn't a picture to be memorised whole — it's built from parts, it turns up inside words, and it sits at a particular level of the HSK. These sheets give you all of that for each of the 1,000 most common characters, in a form you can print and flick through.

What's on each character

• The simplified character and the traditional form, in large type
• Pinyin pronunciation
• English keyword plus fuller definitions
• A breakdown of the character's components — what it's actually made of (both simplified and traditional)
• The three most common HSK words that use the character, with pronunciation and definition
• Coordinates locating the character on The First 1000 Poster

What you get

Two PDF books — one built around mainland simplified Chinese, one around traditional characters as used in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Both include an easy-lookup index ordered by pinyin.

Characters are ordered by frequency, so the book doubles as a syllabus.

How it works

Download and print at home, or take it to a print shop and have it bound. Nothing is shipped.