About · Editorial standards
About Mandarin Steps
Mandarin Steps helps early-stage Chinese learners find their level and drill the right vocabulary, in frequency order, without guessing. Our one job is to answer the two questions that stall self-study, where am I and what do I learn next, with current, sourced information and free tools. We are also honest about a real source of confusion the whole field shares: the exam now has two live structures, and we keep both straight for you.
Who runs it
Mandarin Steps is operated by Urban Algorithm LLC and maintained by the Mandarin Steps editorial team. We are an independent publisher. We are not Hanban, Chinese Testing International, or any official HSK body, and we never imply otherwise. HSK is a registered testing program; we describe it for accuracy and never brand ourselves with it or claim any affiliation with the organizations that administer it.
The HSK 3.0 versus 2.0 freshness policy
The reason this site exists is that the HSK exam is mid-transition. The nine-level HSK 3.0 standard was announced in 2021, but the rollout has been uneven, and many test centers still administer the old six-level HSK 2.0 exam. Most competing resources show only the old six levels. That is our wedge and our obligation: we present both, we put a 2.0/3.0 toggle on every word list, and every rollout fact here carries the date it was last verified against a primary source, so you can see for yourself how current it is instead of trusting a page that may have quietly gone stale.
Our editorial standards
These are the rules that govern every figure and claim we publish, and the reason a page here can be trusted the day you read it, not just the day it was written.
Every figure is sourced and dated
Every claim carries a verified-on date
Confirmed vs approximate, never blurred
No faked credibility signals
Free tools, and why they stay ungated
The placement check and the vocabulary drills are free, with no signup and no install wall. That is a deliberate policy, not a soft launch. Gating a tool behind an email or an app install would break the trust that search engines and answer engines place in a resource, and that trust is the entire point of building this the honest way. The tools work fully on their own.
How this connects to Wordbrush (disclosed)
Mandarin Steps is published by Urban Algorithm LLC, the same company that makes Wordbrush, an iOS spaced-repetition vocabulary app. We recommend Wordbrush, and we tell you that we make it, because pretending to be a neutral reviewer of our own product would be dishonest. That relationship is confined to contextual suggestions at the moment they are relevant and to one clearly labelled recommended-app page. It never gates the free tools, and the placement check and word lists do their job whether or not you ever install anything.
Contact
Found a word count that has drifted, a broken step, or a rollout fact that has changed? Tell us and we will fix it. Reach the publisher through the Urban Algorithm contact page. Mandarin Steps is a project of Urban Algorithm LLC.