We Loved TofuLearn, So We Built Its Successor.

This is not a listicle of TofuLearn alternatives.

This is a love letter—and an explanation of what we built in its absence.

What TofuLearn Got Right

If you never used TofuLearn, you missed something special.

It was not flashy. It did not have a mascot. It did not send push notifications threatening you about broken streaks. It did not ask you to invite friends, watch ads, or purchase gems.

TofuLearn was a quiet, focused app that did exactly what it promised: help you learn Chinese characters through handwriting and spaced repetition.

That was it. Nothing more, nothing less.

No Gamification

While other apps turned language learning into a slot machine—streaks, leaderboards, experience points, loot boxes—TofuLearn simply showed you a character and asked you to write it.

There was no anxiety about maintaining a streak. No dopamine manipulation. No social pressure to compete with strangers. Just you, a character, and the honest question: do you know how to write this?

For serious learners, this simplicity was revolutionary. We did not want to “play” at learning Chinese. We wanted to learn Chinese. TofuLearn respected that distinction.

Real Handwriting Practice

TofuLearn understood something that most apps still do not: tapping multiple-choice answers does not build character literacy.

Chinese characters are dense, complex systems. The difference between 末 (mò, “end”) and 未 (wèi, “not yet”) is a single stroke length. Between 己 (jǐ, “self”) and 已 (yǐ, “already”), a subtle closure. If you only see characters passively—selecting them from word banks, matching them in exercises—your brain never learns to distinguish them reliably.

TofuLearn required you to write. Stroke by stroke, in the correct order. Your finger traced the character on the screen, and the app validated your input. If you were wrong, you knew immediately.

This was not a gimmick. It was pedagogy. Motor memory creates neural pathways that passive recognition cannot. Students who write by hand read faster, retain characters longer, and distinguish similar characters more reliably.

TofuLearn made this practice accessible, portable, and free.

Honest Spaced Repetition

TofuLearn implemented spaced repetition without pretense.

Characters you knew well appeared less frequently. Characters you struggled with appeared more often. The system was simple, transparent, and effective.

There were no hidden mechanics designed to keep you in the app longer than necessary. No artificial difficulty spikes to sell you premium features. The algorithm served learning, not engagement metrics.

Then It Disappeared

One day, TofuLearn was gone.

No announcement. No transition plan. No export feature for your data. The app simply vanished from the store, and years of progress—thousands of characters, carefully built review schedules—evaporated.

This is the risk of depending on free apps maintained by small teams. The economics are brutal. Server costs accumulate. Development time competes with paying work. Eventually, something gives.

We do not blame the TofuLearn developers. Building and maintaining an app is hard. Doing it for free is unsustainable. The surprise is not that TofuLearn shut down—it is that it lasted as long as it did.

But the shutdown left a hole.

The Search for a Replacement

When TofuLearn disappeared, we went looking for alternatives. The search was frustrating.

Anki

Anki is powerful. It is also a project, not a product.

To replicate TofuLearn’s functionality in Anki, you need to: find or create a deck with stroke order data, install add-ons for writing practice, configure the review settings, troubleshoot when things break, and accept that the mobile app costs $25 with an interface designed in 2010.

Anki can do almost anything. But “can do” is not the same as “does well by default.” For users who valued TofuLearn’s simplicity, Anki felt like trading a bicycle for a box of bicycle parts.

Skritter

Skritter is the closest direct competitor. It offers stroke-order writing practice, spaced repetition, and a comprehensive character database.

But Skritter is a subscription service. Stop paying, lose access.

For learners who valued TofuLearn’s model—free, simple, yours—Skritter’s monthly fee felt like a betrayal of the ethos. Language learning is a multi-year project. Subscriptions turn that project into a perpetual tax.

Duolingo and Its Clones

Duolingo is everything TofuLearn was not.

Gamification everywhere. Streaks designed to create anxiety. Hearts that punish mistakes. A mascot that guilts you for missing practice. Simplified characters only. No real writing practice—just tapping and matching.

Duolingo optimizes for daily active users, not for fluency. The business model depends on keeping you engaged, not on graduating you to competence.

For serious learners, Duolingo is not an alternative. It is the problem that TofuLearn was the solution to.

The Gap

We could not find what we wanted: a focused, modern app for handwriting Chinese characters with proper spaced repetition, no subscription, and no gamification.

So we built it.

Introducing Zhong Chinese

Zhong Chinese is the app we wished existed when TofuLearn disappeared.

We kept what worked. We modernized what needed updating. We built a sustainable model that does not depend on ads, subscriptions, or selling user data.

What We Kept

Stroke-Order Writing Practice

Like TofuLearn, we require you to write characters correctly.

Our validation engine checks every stroke—direction, sequence, and approximate shape. You cannot advance by scribbling vaguely correct forms. The system enforces the structural logic of the script, building the motor memory that fluent reading requires.

This is not optional. Every vocabulary card includes a writing phase. Recognition is not enough; production is required.

Minimalist Design

Zhong Chinese is calm, beige, and intentional.

No mascots. No streaks. No leaderboards. No gems. No notifications begging you to return. No dark patterns designed to manufacture engagement.

We respect your attention. When you open the app, you study. When you close it, we leave you alone.

Spaced Repetition

Characters are scheduled for review at optimal intervals. Words you know well fade into the background. Words you struggle with appear more frequently.

The goal is efficient retention—maximum memory with minimum time investment.

What We Modernized

FSRS Algorithm

TofuLearn used a basic spaced repetition scheduler. It worked, but the science has advanced.

Zhong Chinese implements FSRS—the Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler. FSRS models three variables for every card: Difficulty (intrinsic complexity), Stability (how well you know it), and Retrievability (probability of recall right now).

This produces personalized scheduling that adapts to your specific memory patterns, not generic averages. The practical result: approximately 20-30% less review time compared to older algorithms, with equal or better retention.

For a curriculum with thousands of vocabulary items, this efficiency compounds dramatically over months and years of study.

Progressive Web App (PWA)

TofuLearn was a native app, dependent on app store approval and platform-specific development.

Zhong Chinese is a Progressive Web App. It runs in your browser but feels like a native application. It works offline. It installs on your home screen. It syncs across devices.

This architecture means we are not dependent on Apple or Google’s approval processes. We can update instantly. We can offer the same experience on iOS, Android, and desktop without maintaining three separate codebases.

Curriculum Alignment

TofuLearn offered general character practice. Useful, but disconnected from structured learning.

Zhong Chinese maps directly to A Course in Contemporary Chinese (Dangdai)—the standard curriculum at Taiwan’s Mandarin Training Center. Every vocabulary item is tagged by book and lesson. You can pre-learn characters before class, review what you have studied, and ensure your digital practice reinforces your classroom learning.

If you are studying Traditional Chinese seriously, this alignment transforms the app from a supplement into a core tool.

What We Fixed

Sustainability

TofuLearn was free. Completely free. And then it was gone.

We learned from this. Zhong Chinese has a sustainable business model:

• A generous free tier with full curriculum access at a sustainable pace
• One-time license purchases (not subscriptions) for users who want faster acquisition
• Your progress remains yours even if you never pay—we do not hold your data hostage

We are not a venture-funded startup chasing growth metrics. We are a small team building a tool we use ourselves. The goal is sustainability, not scale.

Data Portability

When TofuLearn shut down, users lost everything.

Your Zhong Chinese data belongs to you. Your progress, your review history, your statistics—accessible and exportable. If we ever shut down (we do not plan to), you will have warning and the ability to take your data elsewhere.

The Philosophy

TofuLearn succeeded because it respected its users.

It did not treat language learning as a game to be gamified. It did not treat learners as engagement metrics to be optimized. It did not treat attention as a resource to be extracted.

It offered a simple tool that did one thing well: help people learn to write Chinese characters.

We built Zhong Chinese on the same philosophy.

Language learning is hard. It takes years. It requires discipline, consistency, and patience. The last thing serious learners need is an app that manufactures artificial motivation through psychological manipulation.

What they need is a tool that works—quietly, reliably, efficiently. A tool that respects their time and their intelligence. A tool that helps them do the work without getting in the way.

That is what TofuLearn was. That is what Zhong Chinese aims to be.

For TofuLearn Refugees

If you are reading this because you miss TofuLearn, we understand. We were you.

Zhong Chinese is not a perfect clone. We made different design decisions. We focused specifically on Traditional Chinese and the Dangdai curriculum. We implemented a more sophisticated algorithm. We built a different interface.

But the soul is the same: focused, minimal, respectful.

If you valued TofuLearn’s approach to learning—writing characters by hand, spaced repetition without gimmicks, design that prioritizes function over engagement—we think you will feel at home.

The app you loved is gone. But the approach it championed lives on.

Welcome home.