Chinese Characters

Chinese has no alphabet. Most 汉字 hànzì represent one syllable and usually one piece of meaning: 人 rén person, 山 shān mountain, 水 shuǐ water, 火 huǒ fire. Most characters pair a part that hints at the meaning with a part that hints at the sound: 妈 mā ‘mother’ is 女 ‘woman’ beside 马 mǎ ‘horse’, borrowed only for its sound. Most words take two characters, 中国 Zhōngguó China, 中文 Zhōngwén the Chinese language, and sentences run on with no spaces between the words.

Unicode encodes more than 90,000 CJK ideographs, but nobody needs that many. China's 2013 Table of General Standard Chinese Characters lists 8,105, and its first level of 3,500 covers everyday writing. The most frequent character of all is 的 de, the little word that links a describing word to a noun: 我的 wǒ de ‘my’, 中国的 ‘China's’. This site has pages for single Chinese characters; the grid above gathers the ones people come looking for: greetings, numbers, dates, the zodiac, the lucky characters and the ones with a meaning worth wearing.

In the 1950s and 1960s mainland China simplified more than two thousand characters. Simplified characters (简体字) are written in mainland China, Singapore and Malaysia; Traditional characters (繁體字) in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao. Many characters are the same in both, others differ plainly: 汉 / 漢, 语 / 語, 龙 / 龍, 马 / 馬, and 爱 / 愛, where the traditional form keeps the heart 心 in its middle. This page uses Simplified forms; the Traditional Chinese collection has the other set.

By CLDR's estimates about 1.3 billion people speak Chinese: about 1.27 billion in China, nearly 6 million in Malaysia and more than 4.5 million in Singapore, where Mandarin is one of the four official languages, with large communities in Canada and around the world. Standard Mandarin is 普通话 Pǔtōnghuà ‘common speech’ in mainland China, 國語 Guóyǔ in Taiwan and 华语 Huáyǔ in Singapore and Malaysia. The other Chinese languages share the characters but not the sounds: see the Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka, Gan Chinese and Xiang Chinese collections. Japanese and Korean borrowed the characters too, as kanji and hanja; see Japanese Characters and Korean Letters.

Pinyin tone marks: ā á ǎ à and ü

Pinyin (拼音 pīnyīn, ‘spelled sounds’) is the official way to write Mandarin in Latin letters, adopted in mainland China in 1958 and an ISO standard since 1982. It uses the Latin alphabet, all but v, plus ü, and marks Mandarin's four tones over the vowel: the high level first tone ā, the rising second tone á, the low dipping third tone ǎ and the falling fourth tone à. A syllable with no mark is in the light neutral tone. The tones tell words apart: mā 妈 mother, má 麻 hemp, mǎ 马 horse, mà 骂 to scold, and ma 吗, the particle that turns a sentence into a question.

The mark sits on a or e when the syllable has one (hǎo, xiè), on the o of ou (zhōu, dōu), and otherwise on the last vowel (guì, liù, duì). ü keeps its dots after n and l, where they tell words apart: nǚ 女 woman but nǔ 努 effort, lǜ 绿 green but lù 路 road. After j, q, x and y the u always sounds like ü, so the dots are left off: jù, qù, xué, yú. With a tone, ü carries both marks: ǖ ǘ ǚ ǜ. Capitals take the marks too, at the start of names and sentences: Àomén 澳门 Macao, Ōuzhōu 欧洲 Europe.

You never type tone marks to write Chinese characters: Chinese input takes plain pinyin. For the marks themselves, a Mac's ABC – Extended keyboard has dead keys: Option + A then a vowel gives the macron (ā), Option + E the acute (á), Option + V the caron (ǎ) and Option + ` the grave (à). Windows has no built-in shortcut, so copy them from the grid; in HTML they are numeric entities such as ā ā, ǎ ǎ and ǜ ǜ. On Chinese keyboards ü is typed with v: nv brings up 女 and lv 绿.

Chinese numbers 1–10, big numbers and the yuan ¥ 元

一 yī 1, 二 èr 2, 三 sān 3, 四 sì 4, 五 wǔ 5, 六 liù 6, 七 qī 7, 八 bā 8, 九 jiǔ 9, 十 shí 10. Bigger numbers are built the way they are said: 十一 11, 二十 20, 二十一 21, 九十九 99. Then come 百 bǎi 100, 千 qiān 1,000, 万 wàn 10,000 and 亿 yì 100,000,000. Chinese counts in ten-thousands, so a million is 一百万, ‘one hundred ten-thousands’. Zero is 零 líng; years are read digit by digit, and when written in Chinese numerals, zero is 〇: 二〇二六年 is 2026. Before a measure word ‘two’ becomes 两 liǎng: 两个人 two people.

Cheques, invoices and receipts use the banker's numerals (大写 dàxiě): 壹 贰 叁 肆 伍 陆 柒 捌 玖 拾, with 佰 and 仟 for hundred and thousand, because one stroke turns 一 into 二 or 十 and nobody can do that to 壹. Sounds carry luck: 八 bā rhymes with 发 fā ‘to prosper’, so 8 is the lucky number, and the Beijing Olympics opened at 8 p.m. on 8 August 2008. 四 sì sounds close to 死 sǐ ‘death’, so some buildings have no fourth floor. In chat, 520 sounds like 我爱你 ‘I love you’, 88 is bye-bye and 666 is ‘nicely done’.

China's currency is the renminbi (人民币, ‘people's money’), counted in 元 yuán. Its sign is ¥, the same sign as the Japanese yen; Chinese text often uses the full-width ￥, and the banknotes print the formal character 圆. One yuan is 10 角 jiǎo or 100 分 fēn, but in speech people say 块 kuài and 毛 máo: 五十块 fifty yuan. Singapore and Hong Kong count in dollars, written with $ (新元 Singapore dollar, 港元 Hong Kong dollar); Macao's pataca, 澳门元, is written MOP$; Malaysia's ringgit is written RM.

Chinese symbols and meanings: 福, 囍, 爱 and the zodiac

福 fú ‘good fortune’ is the character of Spring Festival: it goes up on doors on red paper, often upside down, because ‘fu is upside down’ 福倒了 sounds just like ‘fortune has arrived’ 福到了. 囍 xǐ ‘double happiness’ joins two 喜 joy characters side by side, the sign of a wedding. 寿 shòu long life decorates an elder's birthday, and with 禄 lù prosperity they make Fu, Lu and Shou, the three star gods. Unicode has emoji-like rounded forms of the blessing characters: 🉠 🉡 🉢 🉣 🉤 🉥 for 福 禄 寿 喜 囍 财. The New Year greetings are 新年快乐 xīnnián kuàilè ‘Happy New Year’ and 恭喜发财 gōngxǐ fācái ‘wishing you prosperity’, usually with a red envelope 🧧.

The characters people look up for tattoos and art are 爱 ài love, 心 xīn heart, 和 hé harmony, 平安 píng'ān peace and safety, 力 lì strength, 忍 rěn endurance, 梦 mèng dream, 美 měi beauty, 永 yǒng forever, 道 dào the Way and 禅 chán Zen. A single character can shift its sense inside a word, and Taiwan and Hong Kong readers expect the traditional forms (愛, 夢), so show any permanent design to a native reader first. The ‘Chinese alphabet A to Z’ in fancy-text generators is something else: it picks characters that look like Latin letters, 卂 for A, 乃 for B, 匚 for C, and to a Chinese reader it spells nothing.

The twelve animals of the zodiac come round in a fixed order: 鼠 rat, 牛 ox, 虎 tiger, 兔 rabbit, 龙 dragon, 蛇 snake, 马 horse, 羊 goat, 猴 monkey, 鸡 rooster, 狗 dog and 猪 pig. A year is named after its animal, 马年 the Year of the Horse for 2026, starting at the Lunar New Year. The five elements 金 木 水 火 土 are metal, wood, water, fire and earth, and the four directions 东 南 西 北 are east, south, west and north, also printed on the mahjong wind tiles. The China collection has the emoji people send for all of these: 🐉 🧧 🏮 🥟 🥮.

Chinese punctuation marks and quotation marks “” 「」

Chinese punctuation is full-width: each mark takes the space of a whole character. The full stop is a small hollow circle 。, the comma ， sits low in its square, and the enumeration comma 、 separates listed items: 苹果、香蕉和橙子 ‘apples, bananas and oranges’. Question and exclamation marks, colon and semicolon have full-width forms too: ？ ！ ： ；.

Mainland China's horizontal text quotes with “ ”, and ‘ ’ inside them; Taiwan, Hong Kong and vertical text use corner brackets 「 」 and 『 』. Titles of books, films, newspapers and songs go in 《 》: 《红楼梦》 Dream of the Red Chamber, with 〈 〉 for a title inside a title. Online headlines and shop listings flag a label with 【 】: 【新品】 ‘new product’.

The ellipsis is six dots, two … in a row: ……, and the dash is two em dashes, ——; both fill two character spaces. The middle dot · joins the parts of a foreign name: 列夫·托尔斯泰 Leo Tolstoy. The wave ～ marks a range (9:00～17:00) and, in chat, a drawn-out friendly tone: 好的～. In Chinese input mode the keyboard types these by itself: . gives 。, , gives ，, \ gives 、, < and > give 《 and 》, Shift + 6 gives …… and Shift + minus gives ——.

How to type Chinese on a keyboard, Mac and phone

Windows: Settings, Time & language, Language & region, Add a language, Chinese (Simplified, China); it comes with Microsoft Pinyin. Switch keyboards with Windows + Space, and press Shift to flip between Chinese and English modes. Type nihao: a row of candidates appears with 你好 first; Space takes the first one and a number key picks another. No tone marks are needed: the suggestions sort out which nihao you mean.

Mac: System Settings, Keyboard, Text Input, Edit, +, Chinese, Simplified, then Pinyin – Simplified. Switch with Control + Space or the Globe key. The same menu has a Handwriting input for the trackpad, handy for a character you can see but cannot read.

iPhone: Settings, General, Keyboard, Keyboards, Add New Keyboard, Chinese, Simplified, then choose Pinyin – QWERTY, Pinyin – 10 Key, Stroke or Handwriting; switch with the globe key. Android: in Gboard, Settings, Languages, Add keyboard, Chinese (Simplified), with Pinyin and Handwriting layouts. To paste a single character or mark, copy it from the grid on this page.