Learn Chinese with the Dao De Jing
If you know some Chinese, the Dao De Jing is one of the best texts to read next. It is short: 5,281 characters in 81 chapters, most of them under a minute of recitation. 89% of its characters are in HSK levels 1 to 6. And it is everywhere in Chinese: idioms and sayings from it are part of everyday speech, and its words, 道, 德, 无为, 自然, are keys to Chinese thought.
On this site every line has a Mandarin recitation you can slow down and repeat, pinyin above each character, a literal translation and the meaning of every word as it is used in that line. Here is what to read first, and how to study with it.
Start here: chapter 71
Chapter 71 is the easiest chapter of the book: five short lines, nearly all in common characters. Tap a line to hear it; tap a character for its meaning.
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知不知上，
To know that you do not know is best;
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不知知病。
not to know, yet think you know, is a sickness.
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夫唯病病，是以不病。
Only by recognizing the sickness as sickness are you free of it.
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圣人不病，以其病病，
The sage is not sick, because he recognizes the sickness as sickness;
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是以不病。
that is why he is not sick.
Then follow the study path: the 81 chapters in an order where each brings the fewest and easiest new characters. After 20 steps you have met 29% of the book’s characters.
What you need to read it
68% of the text is made of HSK 1 to 3 characters, 89% of HSK 1 to 6 and 96% of HSK 1 to 9; only 90 characters are beyond. What makes it hard is classical grammar: 之, 其, 者, 以 and 而 are used as they were two thousand years ago. Learners from about HSK 3 can follow it with the help on this site.
- The characters of the book by HSK level, with the 100 most frequent.
- Classical grammar words: 之, 其, 者, 以, 而 and more, each with every example from the book.
- Pronunciation: Dao De Jing, Laozi, wu wei, ziran, with their tones.
How to study one chapter
- Listen first. Open the speed menu on the player and choose 0.8×, keep pinyin on, and follow the highlighted character.
- Read the translation line by line, and tap every word you do not know: the word card gives its pinyin, its meaning in that line, its other meanings and how many chapters use it.
- Repeat. Tap a line to hear it again, or set “Repeat each line” in the settings, and say it with the recitation.
- Read without help. Turn pinyin off with the 拼 button, then the translation with 文A.
- Recite. Memorisation mode (press H, or choose it in the settings) hides the Chinese or the translation; recite a line, then tap to check.
- One chapter a day. Chapters you have heard to the end are marked with a dot. Save the audio in the settings to study offline.
Words you already know
Many everyday idioms come from the book. 上善若水, “the highest good is like water”, and 大器晚成, “great talents mature late”, are two of the 53 Chinese idioms from the Dao De Jing, each with its source line, its story and modern sentences. The key terms follow the book’s central words through every chapter, and the quote checker shows which famous sayings Laozi really wrote.
For teachers
Every chapter page has the Chinese, the pinyin, the translation, a summary and a table of the words of the chapter, readable without JavaScript and easy to print. The full text puts the whole book on one page. Everything is free and needs no account.