ChinaTextbook is not software. It is a single repository hosting PDF textbooks for the entire Chinese curriculum: primary, junior, and senior secondary, plus university staples like Tongji’s Advanced Mathematics, linear algebra, and probability. It crossed 70,000 stars on pure demand. Chinese educational materials are hard to obtain freely (paywalls, regional restrictions, scattered sources), and this repo became a de-facto download station, especially for overseas Chinese families. Because GitHub mislabels the language as Roff (it is detecting PDF artifacts, not real code), and because a README skim does not surface the practical realities, this page is the honest operator’s guide.

What is actually in it

The structure is a three-level file tree by stage, subject, and edition, with the PDFs hosted directly in the repo:

  • Primary: math, Chinese, English, science, and ethics across grades 1 to 6.
  • Junior secondary: math, Chinese, English, physics, chemistry, biology, grades 7 to 9.
  • Senior secondary: math (the People’s Education Press A edition, for example).
  • University: Advanced Mathematics (Tongji 7th edition), linear algebra, discrete math, probability.

Most are People’s Education Press editions, the dominant Chinese publisher.

How to actually get it

This is the part the README buries and the part that matters. The repo is enormous, on the order of 40GB or more, and it does not use Git LFS. Files over 50MB are split into roughly 35MB shards (named like file.pdf.1, file.pdf.2) that you must recombine with the project’s merge tool. Practical paths:

  • Browse the GitHub web UI and download individual PDFs you need (simplest).
  • For bulk, the project points to a third-party tool (tchMaterial-parser) to re-download, and notes that for users outside China, cloning the repo can be faster than domestic sources.
  • A full git clone will be slow and heavy because of the size and the lack of LFS; an open issue (#231) suggests splitting into 1GB chunks with sparse checkout to avoid pulling everything.

If you only need a few books, do not clone. Download the files.

A README-beating page has to say this plainly. These textbooks are copyrighted by Chinese state publishers (the People’s Education Press and others). A contributor warning in the issues (#236) states bluntly that redistributing mainland Chinese school textbooks as PDFs is a legal gray area at best. The repo frames itself as educational and public-interest, and GitHub has not taken it down, but you should understand you are using material in a copyright gray zone, not a cleanly licensed open resource. There is no license file, which is itself a signal.

When it fits, and when it does not

It fits overseas Chinese families needing standard curriculum materials, learners who want the canonical Chinese math and science texts, and anyone who cannot otherwise reach these editions. It does not fit as a maintained, dependable archive: it has not been pushed since October 2025, with over a hundred open issues backed up, so treat it as a frozen snapshot, not a living project. And if copyright cleanliness matters for your context, this is not it.

How it compares

There is no real peer here. Complete national-curriculum collections are rare, and the few that exist (textbook archives for other countries) have negligible stars. The honest comparison is not another repo but the alternatives to it: official publisher channels (paid, region-locked) and scattered third-party sites. ChinaTextbook’s value is consolidation, not uniqueness of any single file.

A note on the “language”

If you wondered why GitHub tags this Roff: it is a misdetection from PDF and binary content, not an indication of typesetting source. There is no Roff code here. The repo is a content archive with a merge utility, nothing more.

FAQ

Is ChinaTextbook legal to use? The PDFs are copyrighted by Chinese state publishers, and a contributor warning (#236) calls redistributing them a legal gray area. There is no license file, so treat it accordingly for your jurisdiction and purpose.

How do I download textbooks from ChinaTextbook? Use the GitHub web UI to grab the individual PDF you need. Files over 50MB are split into roughly 35MB shards you recombine with the project’s merge tool, so single-file download through the browser is the least painful path.

Is ChinaTextbook still updated? No. It has not been pushed since October 2025 and carries a backlog of over a hundred open issues. Treat it as a frozen snapshot, not a living archive that gets corrections or additions.

Why is cloning ChinaTextbook so slow? The repo is on the order of 40GB and does not use Git LFS, so a full clone pulls everything. If you must clone, issue #231 suggests sparse checkout in chunks rather than one pull.

For maintained, openly-licensed learning resources see byoungd/English-level-up-tips and the curated tutorials in codecrafters-io/build-your-own-x, both of which are living projects rather than frozen archives.