How many characters are in Mark in Chinese?

17,497 Chinese characters in total, written with 1,227 distinct characters, across 676 verses and 16 chapters.

What HSK level do I need to read Mark?

67.8% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 76% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 18.6% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.

How long does Mark take to read in Chinese?

About 67 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.

Is Mark a good book to start with?

Yes — it ranks 4 of 66 books from easiest to hardest by vocabulary, so it is among the gentler starts.

Mark in Chinese: 1,227 Characters

Answering: “how many characters in Mark in Chinese”

Updated 2026-09-22 · plain text · JSON

Mark is the shortest and fastest-moving gospel, driving from Jesus' baptism to the empty tomb with a repeated sense of urgency. It is often recommended as the first gospel to read.

Every figure below is counted from the 和合本 (Chinese Union Version), simplified script text of Mark on this site: characters from the simplified text, words from its segmentation, HSK levels from the word lists. The difficulty rank compares this book with the other 65 by the share of word tokens at HSK 1-3.

Mark in numbers

Measure	Value
Chapters	16
Verses	676
Chinese characters	17,497
Distinct characters	1,227
Word tokens	12,332
Distinct words	1,933
Average verse	26 characters
HSK 1-3 word tokens	67.8%
HSK 1-6 word tokens	76%
Not in HSK 1-9	18.6%
Difficulty rank	4 of 66 (1 = easiest)
Reading time	67 min at 260 chars/min
Testament	New Testament

The words Mark uses most

#	Word	Occurrences in this book
1	说	321
2	耶稣	293
3	人	189
4	有	119
5	来	110
6	要	101
7	去	83
8	门徒	79
9	众人	59
10	一	57
11	神	54
12	叫	54
13	给	51
14	那里	49
15	看见	41
16	事	41
17	鬼	39
18	地	39
19	告诉	36
20	看	35

Function words excluded. Each word has its own page with pinyin, stroke order and the verses it appears in.

Words that occur in Mark and nowhere else in the Bible

Words
拘守

1 found, capped at 40 per book.

The easiest chapters of Mark

Chapter	HSK 1-3	Verses	Characters
Mark 4	71.7%	41	975
Mark 5	71%	43	1,093
Mark 16	70.2%	20	559
Mark 8	69.7%	38	957
Mark 9	69.5%	50	1,326
Mark 13	68.9%	37	971
Mark 6	68.8%	56	1,475
Mark 14	68.6%	72	1,929

Read it

Mark in the parallel reader — Chinese, pinyin and your own language side by side. Or take its vocabulary deck first, ordered by how often each word occurs in this book.

Questions

How many characters are in Mark in Chinese?: 17,497 Chinese characters in total, written with 1,227 distinct characters, across 676 verses and 16 chapters.
What HSK level do I need to read Mark?: 67.8% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 76% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 18.6% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.
How long does Mark take to read in Chinese?: About 67 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.
Is Mark a good book to start with?: Yes — it ranks 4 of 66 books from easiest to hardest by vocabulary, so it is among the gentler starts.

Related reference pages

Take it further

97 ready-made vocabulary decks — by HSK level, by book or by topic, exportable to Anki, Pleco or Quizlet.
Printable 田字格 worksheets — passages with pinyin, meanings and tracing rows.
The parallel reader — Chinese, pinyin and your own language side by side, every word tappable.
The dataset behind these numbers — plain JSON, free to reuse with attribution.

How these numbers were produced

Text: 和合本 (Chinese Union Version), simplified script — public domain — 66 books, 1,189 chapters, 31,021 verses.
Words: forward maximum matching against CC-CEDICT (this site's own segmentation). A different segmenter gives slightly different word counts; character counts are unaffected.
HSK levels: HSK 3.0 levels from the complete-hsk-vocabulary list; band 7 covers HSK 7-9.
Reading times: 260 characters a minute — an assumption about a fluent adult reader, not a measurement.
Computed: 2026-09-22, from the text on this site.

These are counts anyone can reproduce from the published dataset. They are not a peer-reviewed linguistic study, and the difficulty rankings are one stated formula rather than a validated readability score.

Definitions: CC-CEDICT, licensed CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). If you share this file onward, keep this notice and share alike. Character data: Make Me a Hanzi (Arphic Public License / LGPL).