Learn Classical and Middle Chinese (05/2026)

The Four Books App is now updated with literal glosses for all verses completed thus far. This is the equivalent of a “word for word” Analects, Great Learning, etc—tap any character to get its literal meaning in that context, and how it grammatically sits in the sentence. Glosses are per the orthodox interpretation presented, so there is a single source of truth for how to read these sentences.

The glosses are the work behind the translation—how it was arrived at. And we are now making them available as a tool for studying Classical and Middle Chinese. Tap a character: the first line gives the most literal gloss; the second line carries notes where useful; below that, the word is highlighted within the full-sentence gloss to show the grammar. Tap ‘More’ in the toolbar for the full-verse sheet, which on iPad or in landscape displays aligned phrases to show their parallelism. We recommend using this in conjunction with Kroll’s A Student's Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese in the Pleco app.

Determinations rest on extensive analysis of the ancient verses and commentaries (Sishu zhangju jizhu 四書章句集注), Zhu's classroom discussions (Yulei 語類), his earlier compilation of Song commentators (Jingyi 精義), his anthology of the Northern Song masters (Jinsilu 近思錄), Chen Chun's explanation of terms (Beixi ziyi 北溪字義), the grammar notes of James Legge and William Soothill, and our database of 20,000 bilingual lines by Wing-tsit Chan on how to read Song grammar and terminology.

Lunyu jizhu 論語集注 Begins (01/2026)

Translation of the Discourses with Collected Commentaries (Lunyu jizhu 論語集注) is now underway. As the most widely quoted of the Four Books, the Lunyu comprises 499 verses across twenty chapters. Our first pass will be strategic selections covering 166 verses, one third of the complete text, to reveal the traditional interpretations of the most significant passages before circling back to the more obscure ones. We expect to complete this initial “Selections” edition and begin the Book of Mengzi by the end of 2026.

Four Books App Launched (12/2025)

The Four Books App is now available in the App Store. To our knowledge, this is the world’s first serious Confucian Classics app. There are endless Bible apps, Quran apps, and Buddhist text apps. Yet despite being one of the most influential texts in human history, there was no app for studying the Four Books. It will still be a monumental undertaking to translate the 200,641 characters in this text, but now at least we have an infrastructure set up to transmit this classic to 1.5 billion iOS users in 175 countries!

Daoxue ziyi 道學字義 (09/2025)

Our own handbook Learning of the Way: An Explanation of Terms(Daoxue ziyi 道學字義) is now complete. This small book is in essence a paraphrase of the longer essay definitions by Zhu Xi’s renowned pupil Chen Chun, from his text Chen Chun’s Explanation of Terms (Beixi ziyi 北溪字義), which served as a sort of “fifth book” by which the terms in the other four could be understood. This is included inside the Four Books App as both a readable book and searchable encyclopedia entries, which unlocks with the Scholar Pack.

Daxue zhangju 大學章句 (07/2025)

The first ever English translation of Zhu Xi’s Great Learning with Commentary (Daxue zhangju 大學章句) is now complete and will be available in the coming months as part of our Four Books App. As the shortest of the Four Books, this still required forty days of intense eight-hour sessions. With this book now completed, we also have some hard numbers (averaging 200 characters per day), which allow us to better estimate the schedule for the remainder of the project.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Daoxue Academy Founded (April 2025)

Daoxue Academy 道學學堂 (Korean: 다오쉐 아카데미) has been founded to address the persistent lack of knowledge of East Asian thought in the English world and to seize the great opportunity which modern technology provides for transmitting the Classics. Our approach is neither that of the intellectualized translations by academics nor that of the commercialized translations by the publishing industry, but “first-person” practitioner translations—how these texts are actually written, and were really used, in East Asia—featuring only the text and traditional commentary, free of any layer of Western opinion or narration. In our view a classical text should just be an English replica of itself (ziran 自然), and that is all.