Chinese Language --- I, II, III

these two characters read Hua Xia, another name for China

People often have the impression that Chinese characters are extremely difficult to learn.  In fact, if you were to attempt to learn how to write Chinese characters, you would find that they are not nearly as difficult as you may have imagined.  And they certainly qualify as forming one of the most fascinating, beautiful, logical and scientifically constructed writing systems in the world.  Each stroke has its own special significance.  If you are familiar with the principles governing the composition of Chinese characters, you will find it very easy to remember even the most complicated looking character and never miss a stroke.

The earliest known examples of Chinese written characters in their developed form are carved into tortoise shells and ox bones.  The majority of these characters are pictographs. Archaeologists and epigraphers of various countries have learned that most early writing svstems went through a pictographic stage, as did the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Most writing systems, however, eventually developed a phonetic alphabet to represent the sounds of spoken language rather than visual images perceived in the physical world.

Chinese is the only major writing system of the world that continued its pictograph-based development without interruption and that is still in general modern use.  But not all Chinese characters are simply impressionistic sketches of concrete objects.  Chinese characters incorporate meaning and sound as well as visual image into a coherent whole.