Caigentan - Chinese Wisdom
Ming-era wisdom for daily life
Free · In‑App Purchases · Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS.
Caigentan (Roots of Wisdom) is a collection of aphorisms written by Hong Yingming during the Ming Dynasty. It blends Confucian, Buddhist, and Taoist philosophy into concise, timeless reflections on life. The book contains approximately 360 passages in two parts.
"If you can chew on vegetable roots, you can accomplish anything."
Features:
• Full original text, a clear modern rendering, and a present-day parallel for each entry
• Offline Chinese narration of all 360 entries, both parts
• 10-language interface (English, Chinese, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Spanish, French)
• Bookmarks, search, reading history and a night-friendly reading mode
• Autoplay with a sleep timer
Ratings & Reviews
- This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
• New on Discover: Essential Passages, a note on both parts, and a life of Hong Yingming
• New icon, launch screen and paintings
• Cantonese added — ten languages now, interface and narration
• Store copy corrected: a feature the app does not have is gone
• Fixed a reading-page fault: in the other languages the original and the plain reading could line up one off, so a line carried somebody else's explanation
• Chinese narration completed — all 360 entries
The developer, zhenyu song, 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 Used to Track You
The following data may be used to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies:
- Location
- Identifiers
- Usage Data
Data Not Linked to You
The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:
- Location
- Identifiers
- Usage Data
- Diagnostics
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- zhenyu song
- Size
- 174.6 MB
- Category
- Education
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 15.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 15.0 or later. - iPad
Requires iPadOS 15.0 or later. - iPod touch
Requires iOS 15.0 or later. - Mac
Requires macOS 12.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later. - Apple Vision
Requires visionOS 1.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
English and 8 more
- English, French, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Vietnamese
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- Contains
Advertising
- In-App Purchases
Yes
- Remove Ads $1.99
- Copyright
- © 2026 Zhenyu Song