Learn Chinese Characters

Chinese character, or Han Zi or Zhong Wen, is a written language widely used in Chinese nation. Each Chinese character has a phonetic symbol called Pinyin. Chinese character can trace its history to Shang Dynasty when the characters were carved and sculptured on animal bones and tortoises shells, known as 甲(jiǎ)骨(gǔ)文(wén) in Chinese. It is not until Han Dynasty that the Chinese characters were called Han Zi, with Han meaning the name of the dynasty and Zi meaning character. It is created by the Han people in ancient times and were carried and developed from one generation to another. Now, Han Zi or Chinese characters are the official written language spoken by Chinese people and more and more foreign friends are beginning to learn how to write Chinese characters.

There are many sayings about the origin of Chinese characters.  Among them, the legend of  “仓(cāng)颉(jié)造(zào)字(zì)” is the most popular one. According to legend, Chinese characters were invented by Cangjie, a bureaucrat under the legendary Yellow Emperor. There are quite a few variations of the legend. One of them tells that Cangjie was hunting on Mount yangyu in modern Shanxi when he saw a tortoise whose veins caught his curiosity. Inspired by the possibility of a logical relation of those veins, he studied the animals of the world, the landscape of the earth, and the stars in the sky, and invented a symbolic system called zì (字) — the first Chinese character. It was said that on the day the characters were born, Chinese people heard the devil mourning and saw crops falling like rain, as it marked a second beginning of the world.

At the very beginning when Chinese characters were born, they have many strokes because people at that time tried make the characters look like the images they saw as much as possible. However, this kind of character is difficult to write and remember. As time runs by, Chinese characters have developed to very simple ones with fewer strokes which make them easy to remember and write. To those who have not learnt Chinese language, Chinese characters may seem to consist of many independent strokes, but it’s not the truth. Chinese characters consist of one or more “parts” instead of strokes. Generally speaking, Chinese characters are divided into two categories: single character which is composed of one single part such as “人(rén)、手(shǒu)、口(kǒu)、目(mù)、日(rì)、月(yuè)、山(shān)、水(shuǐ)” etc.; another is the character which is composed of two or more than two single characters such as “江(jiāng)、打(dǎ)、花(huā)、晨(chén)、闻(wén)、圆(yuán) 、梦(mèng)、辫(biàn)” etc.
The development of each single Chinese character embodies and reflects Chinese culture in different aspects. Actually, learning Chinese characters is fun and it gives you a chance to understand Chinese culture.