The Chinese SSStrokesStrokes

Far from being complicated drawings, Chinese characters are made out of simple single strokes, all of them variations of only eight basic ones. All strokes have their own name and are written according to a few rules.

1. The following are the first six strokes, the fundamental ones:

as in the horizontal stroke character heng

(written from left to right) yi (one)

as in the vertical stroke character shu (written from top to bottom)

shi (ten)

as in the down stroke to the left character pie (written from top right to bottom left) ba (eight)

as in the down stroke to the right character na (written from top left to bottom right) ru (to enter)

as in the dot character dian (written from top to bottom right or left) liu (six)

as in the upward stroke character ti (written from bottom left to top right) , 我 ba (to grasp)

2. The last two strokes have several different variations. The first group is composed by five strokes with a hook:

as in the character henggou horizontal stroke with a hook

zi (character)

as in the character shugou vertical stroke with a hook

xiao (small)

as in the character wangou bending stroke with a hook

gou (dog)

as in the character xiegou slant stroke with a hook

wo (I, me)

as in the level bending stroke with a character pinggou hook

wang (to forget)

3. And the following by two single strokes with a turn:

as in the character vertical stroke with a horizontal shuzhe turn to the right yi (doctor, medicine)

as in the horizontal stroke with a vertical character hengzhe turn kou (mouth)

4. Combined strokes are made out of basic ones. The following are a few examples:

as in the vertical stroke combined with a character shuwangou level bending stroke with a hook

ye (also)

as in the down stroke to the left combined character piedian with a dot

nu (woman)

as in the vertical stroke with a double turn character shuzhezhegou and a hook

ma (horse)