Chinese is one of the most beautiful and complex writing systems in the world and it's also the oldest form of writing that has kept so close to the original. Chinese writing dates back 3,000 years. The first Chinese writing ever discovered dates back to the Shang Dynasty (1500-950 BC) and was found on a fragment of a bone.

Chinese writing originated from pictures (hieroglyphs) that people drew of the sun, the moon, plants, animals, and anything else they saw that connected them to the world. Modern Chinese characters bare little relation to the pictures they came from, and many characters are combinations of two or more symbols. Although Chinese characters have undergone many changes over the years, the symbols still provide keys for learning how to read Chinese.

Spoken Chinese includes seven to ten different groups, including Mandarin, Cantonese, and Shanghainese. There are also many local dialects and accents particular to different areas of China. A person born in Northern China who speaks Mandarin, and someone born in Southern China who speaks Cantonese, will both write the same way.

There are over 59,000 characters in the Chinese dictionary, but only 5,000 of these are regularly used. In order to read a newspaper, you must be able to read 3,000 characters.

The known history of writing in China began with the oracle bones, writing on either turtle shells or bones. These bones were used as a means of telling the future, healers would heat the bone and then tell someone's fate based on which way the bone cracked. 

            The next known form of writing came from vessels in bronze that were inscribed with writing. These examples come from the Shang and the Zhou Dynasty (1150-771 BC). Around the 5^th century BC people began writing on pieces of bamboo, wood, and silk cloth.

            The invention of paper greatly changed the form of Chinese writing. Paper was invented in AD 105 by Ts'ai Lun, although archeologists say it was about 300 years earlier. Early paper was made from hemp, bamboo, and other fibers until the invention spread throughout the world in the 10^th century.

            Chinese writing has undergone many different changes in style. But the greatest change has come about in this century, with the invention of simplified characters. Most Chinese learned writing by using the traditional characters, until the formation of the People's Republic of China led to a change in the Chinese way of writing. The simplified characters were designed to aid literacy in China. But Hong Kong and Taiwan still use the traditional characters, and most educated Chinese people can read traditional characters as well as simplified characters.

            Chinese writing has undergone much criticism for its difficulty, and there have been alphabetized forms of Chinese writing such as the Wade-Gilles system and Pinyin. Although there have been some who advocate doing away with Chinese characters and using Pinyin instead, Chinese writing is still around. And I, for one, wouldn't have it any other way.