The Chinese Writing System

Chinese characters or hanzi (汉字) to many are a form of art and are an incredibly important part of the Chinese language and culture. The Chinese are very proud of their culture and with over 3,000 years of history the Chinese language is the oldest language that is still in use today. In fact, artefacts from around 1,500 BC have been found to have Chinese characters scripted onto them.


The original characters were very simple with characters such as person (人) and mouth (口) but even though these characters were very simple, they form the foundation of the Chinese written language and when broken down form many more complicated characters that are used today.

Nowadays there are over 50,000 Chinese characters, each of them unique. However most of them you will never have to use in a lifetime. The most you need to get by is approximately 4,000 to 5,000, but some characters are used more frequently than others. For example, you will see the 500 most commonly used characters over and over again. So start with the most common and bit by bit you will reach your goal.

Here’s a picture I took while I was in TianJin this Chinese New Year.