One of the most difficult tasks in learning Chinese is the mastery of Chinese characters. For beginners, Chinese characters are difficult to recognize, read, write and remember. Some Western learners who are used to alphabetical writing may even view the square-block Chinese characters as some kind of impenetrable enigma.

There are two main reasons why Chinese characters are difficult for foreign learners: the large number of them and the lack of correlation between the forms and the pronunciations. There are more than 50, 000 Chinese characters, and even the most frequently used ones still total three or four thousand. To a foreign beginner, each character is completely different from the others, and he has to learn it as it is.

Although the majority of Chinese characters are phonetic compound characters, containing some components indicating the pronunciation or meaning, the learner has to first master a large number of basic components and characters before he can comprehend the rules and apply them to his study of new characters.

Aiming at smoothing away these difficulties, this book is designed to provide beginners with a fast and efficient way to master 500 basic characters, and through the study of these characters, they can also gain a basic knowledge of the components of Chinese characters - the radicals, pronunciations, meanings and inter-relationships. This will enable them to further build up their reading skills rapidly.

This book takes a new approach completely different from other books in this field of study. It aims to mobilize every learning technique, including vision, imagination, association, comparison, analysis and assimilation.