introduction

Hanzi Bihua Daoxie, or "Bihua Project" for short, is a collaborative, resource development project designed to help students of the Chinese language learn how to write Chinese characters (hanzi). It is a search engine that returns links to quicktime movies that demonstrate stroke order, along with embedded native speaker pronunciation, and English subtitles. It is a project that continues to grow and improve, and we have recently launched version 2.0. Any institution interested in joining our development team, please visit our developers page.

All of the movie files associated with this website are made available to the public under a Creative Commons license. Visit the Creative Commons website to learn more about their important work.

bihua development team

	Project Lead: Zachary Chandler Production: Wu Hui Chuan, Zheng Mao, Ma Wing Tsz Post-production: Szymon Mikulski (search engine), Clara Koh (design)
	Project Lead: Barbara Lindsey Production: Liu Xiangwei Post-production: Kennieth Burwood

how to use this site

The search engine allows the user to search by either English meaning or by the Hanyin Pinyin phoentic for a character. Other search parameters include tone number, number of strokes, simplified or traditional "type", and with the gracious permission of Ted Yao, Integrated Chinese lesson number. Visit the Integrated Chinese Website for more information on this textbook.

All of the search parameters are optional, which means that you have the option to select only one of the values to sort the entire database. For example, you could leave the text box blank, and select just Tone 3. Click on the Search button, and you will see links to all the tone 3 characters currently in the database. You could also select two values, like Simplified ("type") and Lesson 4; clicking on the search button would display only the simplified characters in Integrated Chinese lesson 4.

disclaimer: This website is a work in progress. We strive to continually improve the quality of our search engine and the media files it delivers, but we cannot absolutely guarantee the veracity of any one component of the site. It should be used in conjunction with a textbook, and in the event of any inconsistency, your text, not our website, should be considered authoritative. All the handwriting capture and voice recordings are done by native speakers of Chinese; consequently, this is a high-quality resource. Mistakes of course do occur, and we rely on our users to discover and report bugs via our Contact page.