Handwritten Chinese characters can be magically beautiful and mysterious. I still remember what it felt like looking at Chinese and not understanding anything of what it said and feeling a strong attraction. Indeed, some students start learning Chinese because of the characters. After having studied Chinese for a while, I realised, just like all other students before me have, that handwriting in Chinese takes a very long time to learn. It’s not like learning another alphabet or anywhere nearly as simple as that. It takes many times longer than simply learning to read, which is not true to the same extent for other languages.

That might be okay if you love characters, but what if you don’t? Living as we do in an digital era with smart phones and computers, most students sooner or later ask themselves this question:

Is it really necessary to learn how to write by hand in Chinese or is reading/typing enough?

When using smart phones or computers, we can use phonetic input systems, which select the characters we want for us as long as we can remember how they are pronounced. Since we enter multiple characters, we seldom need to be able to distinguish between individual characters in detail; the computer makes the right choices for us. Do we really need to write Chinese by hand at all? If you don’t understand this question, ask yourself this:

When was the last time you wrote something in English by hand?

I’ll answer that question myself by listing something I normally write by hand:

Shopping lists

Small messages

Brainstorming

Being able to do these things in Chinese is not enough to motivate that you spend hundreds of hours learning how to write all the characters you know how to read. This doesn’t mean you should skip handwriting altogether, though. Let’s look at this a bit closer.

Handwriting as a beginner

Whatever you think about the need to able to write complicated texts in Chinese, I think most people agree that you should learn to write characters when you start learning Chinese. Not necessarily straight away, but if you hope to become literate in Chinese, you definitely need to know the basics of handwriting. Without it, it will be very hard to decipher characters and know how the components work and how they fit together. You don’t need to be a calligraphy master, but you do need basic handwriting skills to do this.

This number of characters you should learn to write by hand is slightly arbitrary, but I think learning the most common 1000 characters or so is a good idea for all students. Learn characters outside the 1000 most common on a need-to-know basis (such as your country, your name, your address and so on). If you find that you don’t particularly like writing much by hand, then don’t, but learning 1000 guarantees that you can manage basic communication in written Chinese, which might be essential at times. Sure, you won’t be able to pass an academic exam with 1000 characters, but that’s not what you’re aiming for. In other words, learn handwriting to enhance your understanding of Chinese characters, not because you need the handwriting in itself.

Intermediate and above

If you need handwriting depends entirely on what you plan to do in the future. Here are a few examples:

Communicating with Chinese friends and relatives – This almost certainly requires no handwriting ability at all. You might be required to understand other people’s handwriting, which might cause problems. This is a bit off topic, but an advantage of learning to write by hand yourself is that it becomes much easier to read other people’s handwriting (you learn the stroke order, which is essential if you want to make sense of cursive writing). still, learning to write additional 3000 characters is a very bad investment compared to spending that time on other things.

This almost certainly requires no handwriting ability at all. You might be required to understand other people’s handwriting, which might cause problems. This is a bit off topic, but an advantage of learning to write by hand yourself is that it becomes much easier to read other people’s handwriting (you learn the stroke order, which is essential if you want to make sense of cursive writing). still, learning to write additional 3000 characters is a very bad investment compared to spending that time on other things. Studying something other than Chinese in China – If you want to pursue higher education in China, you will probably need to be able to write by hand as well, because your tests might be in Chinese. I know that some institutions allow foreign students to write in English, but I wouldn’t bet on it. If your education is in any way related to the Chinese language, you will definitely have to be able to write by hand.

If you want to pursue higher education in China, you will probably need to be able to write by hand as well, because your tests might be in Chinese. I know that some institutions allow foreign students to write in English, but I wouldn’t bet on it. If your education is in any way related to the Chinese language, you will definitely have to be able to write by hand. Teaching Chinese – This is the obvious case where you really need to learn how to write by hand. I don’t think teachers necessarily need to write beautiful characters, but we need to be able to write correctly and clearly so that students can see what we’re doing, even if they themselves aren’t focusing on handwriting.

This is the obvious case where you really need to learn how to write by hand. I don’t think teachers necessarily need to write beautiful characters, but we need to be able to write correctly and clearly so that students can see what we’re doing, even if they themselves aren’t focusing on handwriting. Working in China –Let’s say you want to work in China, but with something other than Chinese (engineering, computers, whatever). Being able to write Chinese by hand is probably good, but it’s not likely to be crucial. Being able to speak, listen, read and type will be much more important.

Again, note how your long-term goals dictate how and what you study. There is no simple answer to the question posed in the opening of this article.

Writing as an active way of processing characters

One advantaged with handwriting over mere recognition is that you have to be more active when you write. Thus, it’s easier to focus on character components and their relationships to each other. If you merely read, it’s easy to view the whole character as a unit, which is very efficient in the short term, but dangerous in the long run when you start encountering similar characters (you will confuse them).

However, this isn’t really an argument for more handwriting, but rather a call for students to be more active when reviewing vocabulary (especially individual characters). Don’t just look at the characters and say “I know this” and click “next”, instead, process the different parts, put them together to form a meaningful whole. This is easier when writing, but it can be done without using pencil and paper. I will develop this in a future article.

Be flexible, be smart



It takes a long time to learn thousands of characters, but it’s not an impossible task that takes years, especially if you already know how to read the characters. I think it’s perfectly possible to keep handwriting to the most common characters and then wait and see what happens. If you decide to become a teacher or want to do anything else where handwriting is needed, it will take some effort to learn how to write, but it’s not impossible. I think this is the best way because it minimises the time wasted on something you’re not going to use in case you don’t need handwriting.

My personal story

I learnt how to write all the characters in a textbook series by hand (approximately 2000 characters), which was enough for quite some time (roughly four years). During this time, I increased the number of characters I could read and understand to well above 5000. A few months ago, I decided it was time to start learning to write more by hand (upcoming exams, the need to take lecture notes better and so on). I’m currently going through my entire Anki deck in order to learn how to write most words and characters by hand. This will take a very long time indeed, but how to actually learn to write by hand will be the focus of an upcoming article; stay tuned!

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