The New Radicals.

“To be sure, ShaoLan is taking liberties with the language here. Very few Chinese characters are actual pictographs that reflect the meanings of the words. This is supposed to be good fun, and a way to remember what’s what. ‘The illustrations are the first step in my method,’ she says. ‘The beautiful images allow people to remember characters easily. We can illustrate hundreds of them.

I’m from The Future, you should move to China: Forbes’ Bruce Upbin examines a theoretically quick and easy way to learn Chinese characters…or, at least, a few of them. “There are some 10,000 Chinese characters in common use. Basic literacy, according to the Chinese government, starts at two thousand characters. A solid grasp of a daily Beijing newspaper requires knowing around three thousand. An erudite Chinese reader should recognize five to seven thousand characters. How about eight?