Launching today
Cangjie · 仓颉
A visual journey through Chinese characters
1 follower
A visual journey through Chinese characters
1 follower
Explore the fascinating world of Chinese characters through illustrations, sourced historical forms and interactive visual journeys. Learn meanings, modern pinyin, and traditional and simplified forms.
Hi Product Hunt!
I'm Isabella, creator of Cangjie.
As a child, I learned that some Chinese characters originated from pictures of things in the world around us. That fascinated me. As I grew older, my love of reading, writing, and history kept bringing me back to these characters and the stories behind them.
I've wanted to build Cangjie for a long time: a visual guide that lets people explore Chinese characters and how their forms have changed over thousands of years. GPT-6 Astra finally helped me bring that idea to life, and I'm excited to share it with you!
Start with 馬 / 马, meaning “horse.” Watch a teaching illustration lead into selected historical forms, including the Oracle Bone Script, and compare them with today's Traditional and Simplified Chinese characters. You can look closely at the shapes, inspect their sources, hear the Mandarin pronunciation, and try writing the character yourself.
I want the experience to be playful and thoughtful. The animations help you compare shapes, while the sources and explanations keep the historical evidence visible - including where our knowledge is incomplete.
For the GPT-6 Astra Challenge, I worked with Astra through Codex to research, design, build, test, and refine Cangjie. It helped me connect the illustrations, form comparisons, animation, writing practice, and multilingual interface into something people can explore for themselves. Seeing an idea I'd carried for so long become a working app has been a joy.
Cangjie is free for everyone to explore. I built it for beginners, native speakers, academics, and anyone who is curious.
Try the horse character and tell me: What helped you understand its shape? What could I make clearer or more enjoyable?
I'll keep updating and adding characters and improving Cangjie, and I'd love your feedback along the way. Thank you for exploring it with me. I'll be here to answer questions and learn from you, too.
To curiosity and the love of learning!
Isabella