ChineseLearner.com
Chinese Writing
The Chinese writing system uses characters (汉字, hànzì) — each one a compact unit of meaning and sound. Unlike alphabetic scripts, each character is built from individual brush strokes following established rules. This section covers everything you need to understand and practise Chinese writing from the ground up.
Start with animations
Watch the correct stroke order for 12 beginner characters. The best first step.
See examples →Learn the rules
Six rules that predict stroke order for almost any character you encounter.
Read the rules →Understand the strokes
The 8 basic stroke types — every character is built from combinations of these.
Explore strokes →Stroke Order Lookup →
Look up the correct stroke order for any HSK 1 character — animated diagram, pinyin, stroke count, and related characters. 50 characters, one page each.
Stroke Order →
Learn the correct order to write each stroke in a Chinese character — animated examples, the 6 rules, and the 8 stroke types.
Character Types →
Understand the six categories of Chinese characters by origin — pictographs, ideographs, phono-semantic compounds, and more.
Radicals →
The 214 Kangxi radicals are the building blocks of the Chinese writing system. Learn to recognise them and unlock the meaning of thousands of characters.
About the Chinese Writing System
How many characters are there?
The Kangxi Dictionary (1716) contains 47,035 characters. In practice, literacy requires knowing about 3,500 characters for newspapers, and around 2,000 for basic reading. The HSK 6 exam (advanced level) covers approximately 5,000 characters.
Simplified vs Traditional
Mainland China uses Simplified Chinese (简体字) introduced in the 1950s to improve literacy. Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau use Traditional Chinese (繁體字). Many characters are identical in both systems; differences are most visible in complex characters.
Why are strokes important?
Each character is made of specific strokes written in a specific order. Learning the stroke order and stroke types gives you a systematic understanding of how characters are built — rather than memorising each one as an arbitrary picture.