Journey to the West 西游记
Learn Chinese with the classic
Only for iPhone
Free · In‑App Purchases · Designed for iPhone. Not verified for macOS.
iPhone
Challenge yourself by reading a real Chinese novel, with exactly the amount of help you need!
Learning Chinese? Bored of graded readers and learning artificial 小明买苹果 sentences? What if you could read a *real* Chinese novel? And not just any novel, but "Journey to the West", maybe the most famous story in all of East Asia?
The key idea of this app is that given an explanation of every necessary character, word and piece of syntax, everybody can read "Journey to the West". By tapping the words you don’t know (and just … reading the ones you do know), the app explains exactly the amount of context you need. Every single word of the text is annotated with:
• Gloss (what the word means in this context)
• Transcription (how it is pronounced)
• Grammar (what its role is in the sentence)
Every sentence also comes with an English translation, and difficult passages (like poems) carry additional notes.
The app also includes a hyperlinked etymological character dictionary for every character in the novel, and notes on people, places and cultural concepts referenced.
The whole novel would take ~1,000 pages to print. All the annotations would take an additional ~7,000 pages. The text contains about 20,000 unique words and 4,500 unique Hanzi. If you finish this book, you will have mastered a substantial amount of the Chinese language.
For most learners, this should provide enough material for hundreds of hours of language learning, with zero hours of boredom or rote memorisation: There are no flashcards, no spaced repetition, no streaks and no notifications. Just the annotated original Chinese text. It is still a language-learning app: By letting you choose exactly which parts of a sentence you don't understand, the input tailors itself to your level.
Ratings & Reviews
- This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
Two new ways to explore the character dictionary.
• Tap the search button to search for any character.
• Tap "View Large" to view a large rendering of any glyph.
The developer, Kai Daniel, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Kai Daniel
- Size
- 70.1 MB
- Category
- Education
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 26.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 26.0 or later. - Mac
Requires macOS 26.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later. - Apple Vision
Requires visionOS 26.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
- English
- Age Rating
13+
- 13+
- Frequent
Guns or Other Weapons
Infrequent
Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
Realistic Violence
Profanity or Crude Humor
Mature or Suggestive Themes
Horror/Fear Themes
Alcohol, Tobacco, Drug Use or References
- In-App Purchases
Yes
- Chapter 100 $2.99
- Chapter 99 $2.99
- Chapter 97 $2.99
- Chapter 98 $2.99
- Chapter 96 $2.99
- Chapter 95 $2.99
- Chapter 94 $2.99
- Chapter 93 $2.99
- Chapter 92 $2.99
- Chapter 87 $2.99
- Copyright
- © Kai Daniel