How many characters are in Proverbs in Chinese?

16,973 Chinese characters in total, written with 1,441 distinct characters, across 913 verses and 31 chapters.

What HSK level do I need to read Proverbs?

52.5% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 67.1% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 24.3% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.

How long does Proverbs take to read in Chinese?

About 65 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.

Is Proverbs a good book to start with?

Not the gentlest: it ranks 61 of 66 by vocabulary. John and Matthew are easier by this measure.

Proverbs in Chinese: 1,441 Characters

Answering: “how many characters in Proverbs in Chinese”

Updated 2026-09-22 · plain text · JSON

Proverbs collects short sayings on wisdom, speech, work, money and character. Its compact, self-contained lines make it one of the easiest books to read a little at a time.

Every figure below is counted from the 和合本 (Chinese Union Version), simplified script text of Proverbs 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.

Proverbs in numbers

Measure	Value
Chapters	31
Verses	913
Chinese characters	16,973
Distinct characters	1,441
Word tokens	12,017
Distinct words	2,335
Average verse	19 characters
HSK 1-3 word tokens	52.5%
HSK 1-6 word tokens	67.1%
Not in HSK 1-9	24.3%
Difficulty rank	61 of 66 (1 = easiest)
Reading time	65 min at 260 chars/min
Testament	Old Testament

The words Proverbs uses most

#	Word	Occurrences in this book
1	人	423
2	必	211
3	智慧	120
4	有	104
5	耶和华	93
6	要	89
7	恶人	85
8	使	83
9	义人	64
10	愚昧	62
11	心	59
12	得	57
13	口	55
14	不可	54
15	道	47
16	说	44
17	聪明	42
18	不要	41
19	因	37
20	路	36

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

Words that occur in Proverbs and nowhere else in the Bible

Words
智谋贻步步传神启谦逊出卖才德劝教真言迷途帝王求知美言深入心得撤回搜求蚂蚁之类巷

21 found, capped at 40 per book.

The easiest chapters of Proverbs

Chapter	HSK 1-3	Verses	Characters
Proverbs 7	63.7%	27	505
Proverbs 23	61.5%	34	649
Proverbs 26	60.7%	27	544
Proverbs 4	60.5%	27	488
Proverbs 25	59.4%	28	562
Proverbs 30	58.6%	33	666
Proverbs 31	58.2%	31	559
Proverbs 27	57.7%	27	542

Read it

Proverbs 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 Proverbs in Chinese?: 16,973 Chinese characters in total, written with 1,441 distinct characters, across 913 verses and 31 chapters.
What HSK level do I need to read Proverbs?: 52.5% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 67.1% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 24.3% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.
How long does Proverbs take to read in Chinese?: About 65 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.
Is Proverbs a good book to start with?: Not the gentlest: it ranks 61 of 66 by vocabulary. John and Matthew are easier by this measure.

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).