HSK 1 Chinese Characters: All 174 With Stroke Order
These are the 174 different characters in the 150 words of HSK 1, the first level of the Chinese proficiency test (HSK 2.0). Each one shows its pinyin and a short English meaning. Tap a character to watch it written, stroke by stroke.
They are simplified characters, ordered by how common they are in written Chinese, so 的, 一 and 是 come first. This is the set GlyphLink deals for HSK 1. The newer HSK 3.0 standard (2021) sets a larger first band: 300 characters and 500 words.
All 174 HSK 1 characters
Most common first. Tone marks show the four tones; a syllable without a mark is the neutral tone, as in 的 de and 吗 ma.
How to learn the HSK 1 characters
- Learn words, then characters. HSK tests words: 朋友 (péngyou, friend) uses 朋 and 友, 中国 (Zhōngguó, China) uses 中 and 国. A character learned inside a word comes with its sound and its use.
- Say the tones out loud. 买 (mǎi, to buy) and 卖 (mài, to sell) differ only by tone. Say each new character with its tone until the tone feels like part of the word.
- Look for parts you know. 你, 他, 们, 做, 住 and 作 share the person part 亻; 说, 话, 语, 请 and 谢 the speech part 讠; 吃, 喝, 叫, 吗 and 呢 the mouth part 口. The part often hints at the meaning.
- Follow the stroke-order rules. A horizontal before the vertical that crosses it (十), the left-falling stroke before the right-falling one (人, 八), top to bottom, left to right, outside before inside with the frame closed last (国, 回), and the centre first in small symmetric characters (小).
- Review little and often. Ten minutes a day beats an hour once a week. Come back to a character just as you are about to forget it, and look for it in new places: signs, menus, a sentence, a game.
Practice them in a tile puzzle
GlyphLink is a free tile-matching puzzle for iPhone and iPad played with real hanzi, and the HSK 1 set is free. Spotting the same shapes again and again trains your eye for them. It is a puzzle, not a course: it builds recognition, not pinyin.
Try a small board right here: tap two identical tiles and link them with a line that turns twice or less.
Board cleared
A small, gentle demo with no clock. In the app, boards have 52, 80 or 114 tiles and about four minutes on the clock.
Opens the GlyphLink App Clip: a real board of hanzi in seconds, right here on your iPhone or iPad.
Free to play, with ads.
No account needed.
Sources and licence
- Pinyin and meanings: CC-CEDICT (MDBG), CC BY-SA 4.0. The meanings are shortened.
- Stroke order: Make Me a Hanzi by Shaunak Kishore, from fonts by Arphic Technology, under the Arphic Public License.
- The 174-character HSK 1 set and its order: GlyphLink's character data.
You may reuse the pinyin and meanings on this page under CC BY-SA 4.0, with credit to GlyphLink and CC-CEDICT; the stroke data keeps the Arphic Public License, which must travel with it. The stroke file this page plays is hsk-1-characters.json.