Origins of writing in China
Most linguists believe that writing was invented in China during the latter half of the 2nd millenium BC and that there is no evidence to suggest the transmission of writing from elsewhere. The earliest recognisable examples of written Chinese date from 1500-950 BC (Shang dynasty) and were inscribed on ox scapulae and turtle shells found near modern Anyang in the north of Henan province. These 'oracle bones' were inscribed with a question for the gods. Heat was then applied, and the resulting patterns of cracks were inspected to determine the gods' answers. You can see a collection of oracle bones at the National Palace Museum near Taipei.
Recently archaeologists in China have unearthed many fragments of neolithic pottery, the oldest of which date from about 4800 BC, inscribed with symbols which could be a form of writing. None of these symbols resemble any of the Shang characters and the likelyhood of deciphering them is remote given the paucity of material.
The Chinese writing system 
Chinese is written with characters known as h¨¤nzi ( ). Each character represents a syllable of spoken Chinese and also has a meaning. The characters were originally pictures of people, animals or other things but other the centuries they have become increasingly stylised and no longer resemble the things the represent. Many of the characters are actually compounds of two or more characters
How many characters?
The Chinese writing system an open-ended one, meaning that there is no upper limit to the number of characters. The largest Chinese dictionaries include about 56,000 characters, but most of them are archaic, obscure or rare variant forms. Knowledge of about 3,000 characters is sufficient to read Modern Standard Chinese. To read Classical Chinese though, you need to be familiar with about 6,000 characters.
Usage
Characters can be used on their own, in combination with other characters or as part of other characters. Click here to see how this works for the character for horse: 
Strokes
Chinese characters are written with the following twelve basic strokes:
A character may consist of between 1 and 64 stokes. The strokes are always written in the same direction and there is a set order to write the strokes of each character. In dictionaries, characters are ordered partly by the number of stokes they contain.
When writing Chinese, every character is given exactly the same amount of space, no matter how many strokes it contains. There are no spaces between characters and the characters which make up multi-syllable words are not grouped together, so when reading Chinese, you not only have to work out what the characters mean and how to pronounce them, but also which characters belong together.
Homophones
There are approximately 1,700 possible syllables in Mandarin, which compares with over 8,000 in English. As a result, there are many homophones - syllables which sound the same but mean different things. These are distinguished in written Chinese by using different characters for each one.
Not all the following characters are pronounced with the same tone, so to Chinese ears they sound different. To Westerner ears however they all sound the same. These syllables can be distinguished in speech from the context and because most of them usually appear in combination with other syllables.
If you look closely, you will notice that some of the characters above have parts in common. These parts give you a clue to how to pronounce the characters.
More examples
Compound words
Chinese verbs and adjectives generally consist of one character (syllable) but nouns often consist of two, three or more characters (syllables):
More examples
Simplified characters
In an effort to increase literacy, about 2,000 of the characters used in China have been simplified. These simplified characters are also used in Singapore, but in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and Malaysia the traditional characters are still used. Here are some examples (simplified characters in red):
More examples
Chinese characters, with some modifications, are also used in written Japanese and Korean, and were once used to write Vietnamese.
Sample text in Chinese
H¨¤ny? p¨©ny¨©n (Chinese phonetic alphabet)
R¨¦nr¨¦n sh¨¥ng ¨¦r z¨¬y¨®u, z¨¤i z¨´ny¨¤n h¨¦ qu¨¡nl¨¬ sh¨¤ng y¨©l¨´ p¨ªngd?ng. t¨¡men f¨´y?u l?x¨¬ng h¨¦ li¨¢ngx¨©n, b¨¬ng y¨¬ng y? x¨©ongd¨¬ gu¨¡nx¨© de j¨©ngsh¨¦n d¨´id¨¤i.
Translation
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)
Longer text sample (Tower of Babel)
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