About
The map, and why it exists
Why this exists
Hanzi Constellation started as a personal problem. Living in Taipei and learning traditional characters, I kept running into the same wall: every app wanted me to memorize characters one at a time, as if each one were an arbitrary picture. But characters aren’t arbitrary — they’re a network. 青 quietly tells you how to read 清, 晴, 請, and 情. The radical 氵 tells you a character lives near water. Once you see the map, you can’t unsee it — and suddenly 3,000 characters stop being 3,000 separate facts.
I couldn’t find the map, so I built it. This is the tool I wanted on the MRT with my phone in one hand: tap a character, see its family light up, understand why it looks and sounds the way it does.
Who makes it
Hanzi Constellation comes from the same small shop that built Constellate, the literary atlas that maps the characters and relationships inside great books. Mapping relationships people usually have to hold in their heads is, apparently, our thing. We care about education and about good technology — the kind that respects you: no accounts you don’t need, no data collection, software that works offline and doesn’t nag.
How it’s priced, and why
You buy it once and you own it. Learning Chinese is a long road, and we don’t think your reference tools should bill you monthly for walking it. The free web map is genuinely useful; one purchase unlocks the rest; optional expansion packs are each their own one-time purchase. No subscription, ever.
Values, briefly
- Traditional characters are a first-class citizen, not a toggle.
- Open data in, honest labels out — sources are credited, and AI-generated audio will always say so.
- Your progress belongs to your device, not our database.
— Built in Taipei, for everyone learning 漢字.