Many of you have a thorough knowledge of written and spoken Chinese, but there has still to be someone wishing to learn the basics of this unusual writing... the secrets of Chinese characters, their history, their romanization and the elements that compose them. The following tutorial is meant to provide beginners all they need to write Chinese characters and find them in a dictionary, but can also amuse advanced students and the curious. Though this is not a language tutorial, learning the fundamental strokes and their correct order helps memorize characters and is an indispensable basis to learn written Chinese. Each lesson provides many examples of single characters and compounds (no Chinese wordprocessor needed to read these pages: all characters will be downloadable images).

DOWNLOAD here the whole tutorial to run it offline (544 Kb zip file).

1. Introduction: the characteristics of Chinese language and writing.
2. A brief history of Chinese characters.
3. Writing tutorial:
   • Lesson 1. The strokes.
   • Lesson 2. The stroke order.
   • Lesson 3. The radicals - part 1.
   • Lesson 4. The radicals - part 2.
   • Lesson 5. The radicals - part 3.
   • Lesson 6. The radicals - part 4.
   • Lesson 7. The radicals - part 5.
   • Lesson 8. The radicals - part 6.
   • Lesson 9. The radicals - part 7.
   • Lesson 10. The radicals - part 8.
   • Lesson 11. The radicals - part 9.
   • Lesson 12. The radicals - part 10.
   • Lesson 13. The radicals - part 11.
   • Lesson 14. The radicals - part 12.
4. How to use a Chinese dictionary: four methods.
5. Index of the characters contained in this tutorial.