For Educators & Researchers
The Zhouyi is not a book for predicting the future — it is a model for understanding change.
But the hard part of teaching it has never been a shortage of material. It is that the structural and spatial relationships resist the blackboard: they move, and a static diagram cannot show them moving. That is the problem this site was built to solve.
The teaching problem it addresses
Anyone who has taught this text knows the sticking points: why the trigram symbols take the shapes they do, how the Earlier and Later Heaven arrangements actually differ, why changing one line produces a different hexagram entirely. These are dynamic, spatial relationships. Presented statically, students are left to memorise rather than understand.
Here they are interactive: lines move, hexagrams transform, arrangements rotate under the cursor. The aim is not to replace teaching but to take over the part that is hardest to draw, so that class time can go to interpretation and discussion instead.
Available in English
- A 20-step guided course — from the yin and yang lines through to the 64 hexagrams, with a short check after most steps
- Origin of the trigrams — each of the eight set against a photograph of its natural image, with an animation of the line-change that produces it
- Trigram compass — Earlier and Later Heaven arrangements, switchable side by side, each position clickable
- All 64 hexagrams — Chinese name, pinyin, English name, structure and judgment text
- A three-level quiz — usable as an in-class check or homework
Free, no advertising, no registration, works on phone and desktop. Full line-by-line commentary currently exists in Chinese only; the English edition is being expanded.
Non-commercial teaching use needs no permission (attribution is all that is asked); paid courses and commercial training require permission in advance — see use and permissions below.
Why it stays free
The core learning material will remain free and open. The reasoning is straightforward: the Zhouyi is already a difficult text to get into, and a paywall would only raise that barrier further.
Commercial licensing applies only where the material is used to generate revenue — paid courses, commercial training programmes. Its purpose is not to restrict circulation but to let the project keep being maintained and extended. Nothing is withheld from students or teachers as a result.
What we can collaborate on
University course use — once a formal arrangement is in place, all content on this site is available free of charge, and we welcome discussion and feedback throughout.
The following can be taken forward directly:
- Filling gaps your course needs — tell us what is missing, or what you would do differently; where we agree an addition is warranted, we will build it and credit you as the contributor, or list you on the supporters page if you prefer
- Terminology and translation — if a rendering in the English edition is questionable, make the case and we will revise it
- A custom entry page for a course — modules arranged into a learning path that follows your syllabus rather than ours
- A course pilot — if you would like to try it in one course first, we are glad to observe how students actually get on with it and refine things accordingly
Other forms of collaboration are welcome too — write and we will reply with what is workable, and expand the material as needed.
How this usually goes
Get in touch→
Try it out→
Use in class→
Feedback→
Improve together
There is no application form and no approval process — write, describe your course and what you need, and we will work out the details directly.
The feedback that helps most
Where the material breaks down for a student is the hardest thing for us to see from here, and the most useful thing to know. If you use it and have a moment afterwards, these three help most:
- Where students get stuck — which step in the course loses people
- What is wrong or misleading — particularly in the translations, where a rendering may have been chosen badly
- What is missing — material you expected to find and did not
Two lines are genuinely useful — no need for two pages.
Use and permissions
To avoid ambiguity — classroom use is open; copyright in the content is retained:
✓ No permission needed
Non-commercial school teaching and personal study · with attribution
- Projecting or demonstrating in a class
- Listing on a syllabus or reading list
- Linking for students to study independently
- Screenshots in your slides
✕ Please ask first
Anything paid, or generating revenue
- Paid courses, commercial training, ticketed talks
- Copying text, images or code in bulk
- Mirroring or republishing the site
- Adapting it into your own published materials or courseware
- Any other commercial use
Note: the writing, diagrams, photographic material and interactive implementation on this site are original work, © 2026 zhouyi-iching.com. Teaching use is open because the point of building it was for it to reach classrooms — but that is not a waiver of rights. Any paid instruction or revenue-generating use built on this material requires permission in advance. For anything beyond the scope above, write and describe the intended use and scale, and we will get back to you.
About us
Zhouyi-IChing exists to make the Zhouyi genuinely readable through modern design and interaction. The core material is free and openly available, and continues to be expanded.
We welcome collaboration with universities, research institutions and educational platforms in developing the digital study of the Zhouyi. If an institution or individual would like to support the project’s continued development, we are glad to discuss that too — support goes directly into expanding the material, developing the English edition and building new tools.
Contact: the contact page on this site
We read everything, and usually reply within a few days.