How many characters are in John in Chinese?

23,643 Chinese characters in total, written with 1,011 distinct characters, across 877 verses and 21 chapters.

What HSK level do I need to read John?

72.7% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 80.1% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 16.2% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.

How long does John take to read in Chinese?

About 91 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.

Is John a good book to start with?

Yes — it ranks 1 of 66 books from easiest to hardest by vocabulary, so it is among the gentler starts.

John in Chinese: 1,011 Characters

Answering: “how many characters in John in Chinese”

Updated 2026-09-26 · plain text · JSON

John is the most reflective gospel, built around seven signs and a series of "I am" sayings. Its plain vocabulary and short sentences also make it a common starting point for readers learning a new language.

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

John in numbers

Measure	Value
Chapters	21
Verses	877
Chinese characters	23,643
Distinct characters	1,011
Word tokens	16,996
Distinct words	1,626
Average verse	27 characters
HSK 1-3 word tokens	72.7%
HSK 1-6 word tokens	80.1%
Not in HSK 1-9	16.2%
Difficulty rank	1 of 66 (1 = easiest)
Reading time	91 min at 260 chars/min
Testament	New Testament

The words John uses most

#	Word	Occurrences in this book
1	说	522
2	耶稣	335
3	人	201
4	来	199
5	要	160
6	去	132
7	父	119
8	有	117
9	信	97
10	叫	90
11	门徒	89
12	神	86
13	就是	86
14	那里	84
15	看见	77
16	知道	75
17	若	75
18	事	73
19	犹太人	72
20	话	67

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

Words that occur in John and nowhere else in the Bible

Words
弥赛亚父爱低土马早在末日大于保惠师缸痕提比哩亚早饭信子再犯

13 found, capped at 40 per book.

The easiest chapters of John

Chapter	HSK 1-3	Verses	Characters
John 14	78.8%	31	940
John 9	76.7%	41	1,092
John 15	76.2%	27	790
John 17	75.6%	26	807
John 16	75.1%	33	970
John 5	74.8%	46	1,147
John 21	74.2%	25	830
John 10	74%	42	986

Read it

John 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 John in Chinese?: 23,643 Chinese characters in total, written with 1,011 distinct characters, across 877 verses and 21 chapters.
What HSK level do I need to read John?: 72.7% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 80.1% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 16.2% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.
How long does John take to read in Chinese?: About 91 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.
Is John a good book to start with?: Yes — it ranks 1 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: 2026-09-26, 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).