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Promotional Content for HSK 4 Mock Exam Open Source Project

1. Reddit Post — r/ChineseLanguage

Title: I open-sourced 12 complete HSK 4 mock exams (1,176 questions) — free JSON data for practice apps, Anki decks, or self-study

Body:

Hey everyone! I run a Chinese language school in Beijing (Mandarin Zone, since 2008), and I've been creating HSK mock exams for our students for years.

I decided to open-source all of our HSK 4 practice tests — 12 complete exams with 1,176 questions covering:

  • 听力 Listening (true/false + multiple choice, with audio file references)
  • 阅读 Reading (fill-in-the-blank, sentence ordering, comprehension)
  • 书写 Writing (multiple choice)

Everything is in clean JSON format, so you can:

  • Build your own practice app
  • Import into Anki or other flashcard tools
  • Use it for NLP/language research
  • Just study directly from the data

Try it online: [link to GitHub Pages demo]

GitHub repo: [link]

The data is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, so you're free to use and adapt it for non-commercial purposes.

If you find any errors or want to contribute, PRs are welcome! I'm also planning to add HSK 3 and HSK 5 tests later.

加油！🇨🇳

2. Reddit Post — r/languagelearning

Title: Open-sourced 1,176 HSK 4 (Chinese proficiency) practice questions — free dataset for learners and app developers

Body:

I teach Chinese in Beijing and I've put together 12 complete HSK Level 4 mock exams over the years. Instead of keeping them behind our school's website, I decided to open-source everything.

What's HSK 4? It's the intermediate level of China's official Chinese proficiency test. Passing it means you can have conversations on a wide range of topics and understand ~1,200 vocabulary words.

What's included:

  • 12 full practice tests (100 questions each)
  • Listening, reading, and writing sections
  • Answer keys for every question
  • Audio file references for listening sections
  • Everything in structured JSON — easy to use in any app

Live demo: [GitHub Pages link] Repo: [GitHub link]

I hope this helps fellow Chinese learners! If there's interest, I'll add more levels (HSK 3, 5, 6).

3. Reddit Post — r/LearnChinese

Title: Free HSK 4 practice tests — 12 complete mock exams open-sourced on GitHub

Body:

大家好! I'm sharing 12 complete HSK 4 mock exams that I created for my students at Mandarin Zone (my Chinese school in Beijing).

All 1,176 questions are available for free in JSON format on GitHub, with an online demo where you can take the tests directly in your browser.

The tests follow the real HSK 4 exam format:

  • Part 1: 听力 Listening (判断对错 + 选择题)
  • Part 2: 阅读 Reading (选词填空 + 排列语句 + 阅读理解)
  • Part 3: 书写 Writing

Take a test now: [demo link] Get the data: [GitHub link]

Good luck with your HSK prep! 祝你们考试顺利！

4. DEV.to Article

Title: How I Open-Sourced 1,000+ Chinese Exam Questions from WordPress to GitHub

Tags: opensource, education, webdev, chinese

Body:

I run Mandarin Zone, a Chinese language school in Beijing. Over the years, I built 12 complete HSK 4 mock exams using the AYS Quiz Maker WordPress plugin for our students to practice online.

Recently, I decided to open-source all of this content. Here's how I extracted 1,176 questions from a WordPress database and turned them into a clean, developer-friendly GitHub repository.

The Challenge

Our quiz data was locked inside WordPress — stored across multiple database tables (aysquiz_questions, aysquiz_answers, aysquiz_quizzes) with HTML-embedded content, base64 images, and WordPress shortcodes for audio files.

The Extraction

Step 1: SQL Export

I wrote targeted SQL queries to join the questions, answers, and quiz mapping tables:

SELECT 
    q.id AS question_id,
    q.question AS question_text,
    q.type AS question_type,
    a.answer AS answer_text,
    a.correct AS is_correct,
    a.ordering AS answer_order
FROM aysquiz_questions q
LEFT JOIN aysquiz_answers a ON a.question_id = q.id
ORDER BY q.id, a.ordering;

Step 2: Data Cleaning

The raw data had WordPress shortcodes like [audio wav="..."][/audio] and HTML entities everywhere. I wrote a Python script to:

  • Extract audio URLs from shortcodes
  • Strip HTML tags while preserving Chinese text
  • Map question types based on content patterns
  • Group answers by question ID

Step 3: Structured JSON

Each test became a clean JSON file:

{
  "quiz_id": 2,
  "title": "HSK 4 Sample Quiz",
  "questions": [
    {
      "number": 1,
      "type": "listening_true_false",
      "audio": "https://media.mandarinzone.com/.../hsk4-1-02.wav",
      "options": ["对", "错"],
      "correct_answer_index": 0
    }
  ]
}

The Result

  • 12 complete HSK 4 mock exams in JSON format
  • 6 question types: listening true/false, listening choice, fill-in-blank, sentence ordering, reading comprehension, and general choice
  • GitHub Pages demo where anyone can take the tests online
  • CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license — free for non-commercial use

What You Can Build With This

  • A mobile HSK practice app
  • Anki flashcard decks
  • NLP training data for Chinese language models
  • Your own quiz platform

Check out the repo: github.com/Make-dream-clear/hsk4-mock-exam

If you're learning Chinese or building language learning tools, I hope this helps. PRs welcome!

5. Awesome Chinese Learning PR

PR Title: Add HSK 4 Mock Exam open-source practice tests

PR Body:

Hi! I'd like to add HSK 4 Mock Exam to the list.

It's a collection of 12 complete HSK 4 practice tests (1,176 questions) in structured JSON format, with an online demo. Covers listening, reading, and writing sections with answer keys.

Created by Mandarin Zone, a Chinese language school in Beijing since 2008.

Suggested addition to the README (under a "Practice Tests" or "HSK" section):

- [HSK 4 Mock Exam](https://github.com/Make-dream-clear/hsk4-mock-exam) - 12 complete HSK 4 practice tests with 1,176 questions in JSON format. Listening, reading, and writing sections with answer keys. [Online demo](https://hsk4.mandarinzone.com/).

6. Hacker News (Show HN)

Title: Show HN: 12 open-source HSK 4 Chinese proficiency mock exams (1,176 questions in JSON)

Body:

I run a Chinese language school and open-sourced our HSK 4 practice test database: 12 complete exams, 1,176 questions, structured JSON.

GitHub: [link] Live demo: [link]

Question types include listening (with audio URLs), reading comprehension, fill-in-the-blank, and sentence ordering. Everything follows the official HSK 4 exam format.

Built by extracting data from WordPress (AYS Quiz Maker plugin) → SQL → Python → clean JSON. The whole extraction and transformation process might be interesting if you're dealing with similar WordPress-to-static-data migrations.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licensed.

Posting Schedule Suggestion

Day Platform Post
Day 1 GitHub Create repo, enable GitHub Pages
Day 1 DEV.to Publish article
Day 2 Reddit r/ChineseLanguage Post (highest value audience)
Day 2 Reddit r/LearnChinese Post
Day 3 Reddit r/languagelearning Post
Day 3 Hacker News Show HN post
Day 4 awesome-chinese-learning Submit PR
Day 7 V2EX / 知乎 Chinese dev community posts

Tips:

  • Post on Reddit Tuesday-Thursday mornings (US time) for best visibility
  • Hacker News: post around 8-9 AM EST
  • Don't cross-post on the same day — space them out
  • Engage with every comment — this is critical for Reddit algorithm
  • On DEV.to, add a custom canonical URL pointing to your GitHub Pages