DuShu: a powerful reading tool for Mandarin Chinese

Bored of reading the same Chinese textbooks, but Chinese newspapers and other texts are still too difficult? DuShu is a reader app that will take any Chinese text and turn it into a learning resource. Challenging texts become readable in an instant. I recommend DuShu especially to upper intermediate and advanced learners who want to improve their reading speed and comprehension. Here’s why.

Chinese reader DuShu

When I started preparing for HSK 5 back in 2017, I discovered my main obstacle to passing the test was reading speed. I simply wasn’t reading fast enough. The only thing do about that was to read more! More extensively and more frequently. But where to begin?

DuShu is only one of many options. It’s somewhat similar to the Pleco dictionary’s clipboard reader which allows you to copy-paste a random text and translate characters by tapping on them. Except that DuShu is really a reading tool in its own right. The Chinese reader breaks down any text in readable parts. It adds Pinyin, underlines and tone colors if needed and generates super helpful vocabulary lists which you can export to other apps and devices (premium feature though).

The app (size: 56 MB) runs on Android devices only and has some other paid features. In this review, I’ll introduce DuShu’s main features and share my experiences with this Chinese reader.

DuShu’s main features   

Unlike other paid apps (take Skritter for example) DuShu’s basic functions actually offer much more than just a demo-version of the app. You practically can enjoy all features, but some – like sentence translation – can be used only a limited number of times. Not a big issue in my opinion.

What I like about DuShu

Read whatever you want

I’ve been using DuShu for over a year now, reading with DuShu everyday for 20 to 30 minutes, mostly “checking” the news in Chinese. I simply picked any news article that sounded interesting to me, copied the content and saved it in DuShu. The reading list shows you the number of characters, your progress (36 % read) and difficulty level for each text, so you don’t get lost.

No big deal translations are limited

I found that reading with DuShu is a lot of fun. Even without the translations from Google that are limited to 10 per day. For more you must upgrade to the premium version. Vocabulary still gets translated individually though, so it’s not the end of the world.

Exercises and flashcards

Finished reading? Don’t forget to have a look at the automatically generated exercises. They are pretty helpful, although they may seem rather random and basic at first. Open settings and do some fine-tuning to make them fit your level, otherwise you’re likely to get random vocabulary thrown at you. For flashcards select Don’t show words at or below HSK 4 for example.

DuShu – how it looks on my tablet

Difficulty levels in DuShu

DuShu screens each text automatically on difficulty. With a solid HSK 4 basis you can have a go at intermediate up to upper intermediate texts, but the advanced texts – for me at least – were mostly overkill. It does make a difference if you’re familiar with the topic of course. I personally like reading texts that are a little bit out of my league, the gap shouldn’t be too wide though. In my opinion, it’s best to avoid texts where you have to look up every second word.

What could make DuShu even better…

Doing some research on the app, I noticed some people having issues with the audio function: Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I sometimes have this problem too.

Integrated graded readers as premium feature – like the ones Pleco offers – would also be welcomed, because finding the right texts on the internet is not always as easy as one would expect. The same goes for a spaced repetition flashcard system, but maybe this is too much to ask for. You can export vocabulary lists (premium feature) to other apps like Anki by the way.

Fun would be to add an element of a competition. Like competing with friends or other learners on reading “distance” or speed and checking the leader board to see how you’re keeping up. This could be combined with some other parameters and testing options to track your progress.

Conclusion

To wrap up this review: DuShu is a reading app that focuses on the essentials and delivers what it set out to do: helping learners to improve their Chinese reading skills. The app technically supports you to read and understand the latest news from China or any other text in Mandarin. Equally important, DuShu makes reading Mandarin interesting enough to keep doing it on a daily basis – at least that’s been my experience. The daily DuShu routine allowed me – without exaggerating – to gradually speed up my reading and expand my vocabulary. The ultimate goal being not relying on any tool to read advanced Chinese texts.

This blog-post was updated and rewritten in October 2020.

What helps you to improve your Chinese reading skills? Any experience with DuShu or other Chinese readers? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Graded Chinese readers

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