Written Chinese is not based on an alphabet or syllabary. Most characters can be analyzed as compounds of smaller components, which … See more

Over the history of written Chinese, a variety of media have been used for writing. They include:
• Bamboo and wooden slips, from at least the 13th century BCE
• Paper, invented no later than the 2nd century BCE See more

• Chen, Ping (1999). Modern Chinese: History and Sociolinguistics. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-64572-0.
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• Yue E Li and Christopher Upward. "Review of the process of reform in the simplification of Chinese Characters". Archived 2007-01-02 at the Wayback Machine (Journal of Simplified Spelling Society, 1992/2 pp. 14–16, later designated J13) See more

Written Chinese is one of the oldest continuously used writing systems. The earliest examples universally accepted as Chinese writing are the oracle bone inscriptions made … See more

Chinese characters have always been used to represent individual spoken syllables. While writing was being invented in the Yellow River valley, words in spoken Chinese were largely monosyllabic, and each written character corresponded to a monosyllabic word. … See more

Because the majority of modern Chinese words contain more than one character, there are at least two measuring sticks for Chinese literacy: the number of characters known, and the number of words known. John DeFrancis, in the introduction to his Advanced Chinese … See more