My Journal

Although expats in China can find many english translation in public places, the main writen language is still Chinese. It's useful to familiarize oneself with it. To recognize Chinese characters, our tip is to get familiar with them, to write them, yes there are orders to write them.  After a while you will start to see a pattern.

For example, to write "8", a teacher would say write piě 撇 then nà 捺 becomes 八 . All strokes do have names.

2. Orders in writing chinese characters:

. From top to bottom




. From left to right




. From outside to inside
For example, to write wen, first do the outer



then the inside

. Horizontal line then the vertical line




. First the middle part then the sides