For the first time in history, there is now an easy Chinese input method that you can use without needing to know the pronunciation of the character you’re trying to type. It’s called Jade Gazebo.

Other shape-based input methods have existed before, but they took a long time to learn, and if you didn’t get the input sequence exactly right, the character you wanted wouldn’t come up. With Jade Gazebo, you can hunt-and-peck Chinese just like English.

Let’s take a moment to think about how profound that is. Even if I don’t know Greek, I can look a passage of Greek text, look at a Greek keyboard, and successfully type it. I might not be very fast at it, but I’ll succeed. Same with Hindi. Same with Inuktitut. But with Chinese, that’s never before been possible.

Now it is.

But don’t think Jade Gazebo is just for hunting-and-pecking. Jade Gazebo can also be used for professional touch-typing, since 99% of characters have unique input sequences. Using this one input method, you can start as a hunt-and-pecker and eventually become a touch-typist. That’s something no other Chinese input method can claim.

Obviously the main beneficiaries of this will be people who want Hanzi tattoos. Now that the most ignorant English-speaker can type any random Chinese character by sight, there’s no excuse for them to not look up the meaning of their desired tattoo on Wiktionary before getting it.