Character Writing

Recommended Books for Chinese character writing 

Nearly Everything About Chinese Characters
by Gaofeng Wu (Hardcover, 224 pages) from £14.20

This is an excellent book about Chinese characters. You can find “nearly everything” from history, culture, and evolution of writing in a very accessible way. This book takes a systematic approach to learning Chinese characters and Chinese-speaking, covering various aspects with succinct examples. The calligraphy works are particularly delicious. The author recommends a `hanzi’ threshold’ of 1800 characters for non-Chinese speakers, and proposes and listed the 120 Basic and Elementary Chinese Characters. The pictures, stories, legends, idioms and proverbs, and Chinese riddles etc. are all very interesting and inspirational. For more details and the reviews of this book, or to buy this book, click here. 

China: Empire of Living Symbols
by Cecilia Lindqvist (Paperback, 423 pages) from £12.74

This is one of the best English book illustrating Chinese characters. By explaining the relation of characters to the dynamics of the Nature, the author Cecilia Lindqvist shows the reader how Chinese characters are derived from reality. She demonstrates in an iluminated way using ideograms and photos – all the traditional characteristics of China`s millenar culture. It introduces us to the pictorial element of the Chinese script in a more engaging way than has ever been done before, and becomes in fact a painless way of acquiring a vocabulary of the basic building blocks which go to make up Chinese characters. The book is rounded out with a gallery of superb color photographs; a section on Character Stroke Order; a really excellent Bibliography of both Western and Chinese books; a table of Dynasties and Periods; and a full Index. For more details and the reviews of this book, or to buy this book, click here.

Fun with Chinese Characters (Limited Edition Bundle Pack)
by Tan Huay Peng (Paperback, 504 pages) from £14.44

The Chinese script, with its many complex strokes, can often prove to be a formidable challenge. Fun With Chinese Characters is a series of 3 volumes published in Singapore, which helps to demystify the Chinese language by deconstructing Chinese characters and showing how they evolved from ancient pictographs and ideographs to their modern form. With beautifully rendered illustrations by cartoonist Tan Huay Peng, concise explanations and a stroke-by-stroke breakdown of how to write the characters, this set appeals to both casual and serious students of the Chinese language. The most common Chinese characters covered by this series are presented in a logical progression, so that often each character builds on the next. The character profile is followed by a selection of related words and phrases and an example sentence. The vivid descriptions of each character are very useful for memorizing their structure. For more details and the reviews of this book, or to buy this book, click here.

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