Simplified and Traditional Chinese Characters

The written Chinese language evolved over the years however today there are two main written versions of the characters in use today, traditional and simplified. Personally I only learn how to write simplified character, but there are certain rules which you can learn to recognise traditional characters. Traditional characters can be important to learn, especially when you go to KTV (karaoke). Most KTV bars use traditional characters and if you wanna sing along, you best get used to the traditional characters, only if it’s to read and recognise them.


Simplified is the more common written form in Mainland China where as the traditional form you will find in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Although the simplified form with fewer strokes can be quicker and easier to learn, the traditional form can also be easier to understand from a different perspective. This is because the traditional characters still maintain all of the radicals and meaning within the character, therefore if you were to look at a traditional character for the first time and you just understood the radicals, you could probably piece them together to get a rough understanding of what the characters meaning.

Simplified or traditional, which do you understand and which do you prefer?

龙 - Dragon - simplified character
龍 - Dragon - traditional character

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.