CJK characters
Chinese is written almost exclusively in Chinese characters. It requires over 3,000 characters for general literacy, but up to 40,000 characters for reasonably complete coverage. Japanese uses fewer characters — general literacy in Japanese can be expected with 1,945 characters. The use of Chinese characters in Korea is becoming increasingly rare, although idiosyncratic use of Chinese characters in proper names requires knowledge (and therefore availability) of many more characters. However, even today, students in South Korea are taught 1,800 characters.
Shigin
Kanshi and classical Chinese poems are usually composed of four or more lines of Chinese characters, or kanji (漢字), each line having the same number of characters. "Gin" with four phrases, each seven characters long (the most common), are classified as . There is strictly only one standard melody, although many poems will be distinguished by minor variations from this theme.