Terms of Use

Who we are

Danshu Books (丹書, “Danshu”, “we”, “us”) is a reading site for classic Chinese fiction at danshubooks.com, run by an individual operator. By using the site, with or without an account, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the site.

Reading the site

Reading is free and needs no account. We may add, change or withdraw works, chapters and features at any time, and we do not promise that any of them will stay available.

Your account

An account is optional. It keeps your place in each book on every device where you sign in. You can sign in with Google, with Apple, with a code sent to your email, or with your email and a password.

Keep your sign-in details to yourself, and write to [email protected] if you think someone else has used your account. You are responsible for what is done under your account. Use an email address you can receive mail at: we use it to sign you in and, when needed, to contact you about your account.

You can delete your account at any time on the Account page. We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms or is used to harm the site or other people.

The site is not directed at children under 13.

Our content and your licence

The English translations, plain-Chinese renderings, notes, introductions and illustrations, the selection and arrangement of the material, and the site’s design and code belong to Danshu Books and are protected as described in our Copyright Notice. The classical Chinese originals are in the public domain and are not ours.

We give you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable and revocable licence to read the site’s content on your own devices for your own non-commercial use, including saving books for offline reading with the site’s own save feature. All rights not expressly granted are reserved.

What you may not do

Unless we have given you permission in writing, you may not:

• copy, scrape, crawl or download the site’s content in bulk, whether by script, bot or any other automated means;
• mirror the site, or republish, redistribute, sell or license its content, in whole or in substantial part, in any medium;
• use the content to train, fine-tune, test or evaluate any artificial-intelligence or machine-learning model, or include it in a dataset;
• publish translations, adaptations, editions or other works derived from our translations, notes or illustrations;
• get around any limit on access, including paid features if they are offered, or remove copyright or other notices;
• create accounts by automated means, or interfere with, overload or attack the site, its servers or other readers’ use of it.

Search engines may crawl and index the site as our robots.txt file allows, to show it in search results. That permission does not extend to building datasets or training AI models.

Quoting us

You may quote short passages of our translations and notes for commentary, criticism, review, teaching, research or news, provided you credit “Danshu Books” and link to the page you quote. A short passage means a few sentences, never a whole chapter or story. For anything more, write to [email protected].

The classical Chinese originals are free for anyone to use. Our Chinese text comes from the public sources named on each book’s page; we suggest working from those.

Translations made with AI

Our translations, plain-Chinese renderings, notes and illustrations are made with AI models working to our own rules, glossaries and instructions, and are then checked, reviewed and corrected through our editorial process. They may still contain mistakes. They are offered for reading and enjoyment, not as authoritative scholarly editions. If you find an error, please tell us.

Paid features

The site is free to read at present. We plan to offer a paid membership, described on our Membership page; it is not on sale yet. If it is offered, payments by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay will be processed by Creem as merchant of record, and payments with WeChat Pay or USDT by our own billing service; the price and how long a purchase lasts will be shown before you buy, and refunds will follow our Refund Policy.

Other services and links

Signing in with Google or Apple is also governed by that company’s own terms. The site links to other websites, such as the sources of our Chinese texts; we are not responsible for their content.

Disclaimer and liability

The site and its content are provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including of accuracy, fitness for a particular purpose and uninterrupted availability. Keeping your reading progress is a convenience, and we do not guarantee that it will be kept.

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss, or for loss of data, arising from your use of the site. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, or takes away rights you have as a consumer that cannot be waived.

Ending your use

You can stop using the site and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or end your access if you break these terms. The parts of these terms about our content, what you may not do, quoting, and liability continue to apply afterwards.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The date at the top of this page shows when they last changed, and significant changes will also be announced on the site. If you keep using the site after a change, you accept the new terms.

Language

These terms are written in English. The Chinese versions are translations provided for convenience; if they differ, the English version prevails.

Contact

Questions about these terms: [email protected].