Character amnesia
It is difficult to establish exactly how many different Chinese characters are in use today; the new HSK, a widely used proficiency test for Standard Chinese as a second language, tests over 2,600 different characters, whilst in 1988 the People's Republic of China published the "List of Commonly Used Characters in Modern Chinese" which contains 7,000 different characters. In Japan, where a smaller set of characters are in general usage, the Japanese Ministry of Education prescribes the teaching of 2,136 kanji in primary and secondary school in a list called the jōyō kanji, meaning "regular-use Chinese characters".
Chinaknowledge
With 1.5 billion speakers, the Chinese language is the most spoken language of the world. It is nevertheless one single language that is spoken in the same form in all parts of China, nor has it been unchanged over time. The script by which the Chinese language is written is an ideographic script embedded into clouds of mystery. It is an obstacle for education and literacy and has nevertheless been used for a vast treasury of literature. And it has provided an example for the scripts of neighbouring states. This part of the encyclopedia provides an introduction into important aspects of both the Chinese language and the Chinese script.