Written Chinese
Written Chinese () comprises Chinese characters used to represent the Chinese language. Chinese characters do not constitute an alphabet or a compact syllabary. Rather, the writing system is roughly logosyllabic; that is, a character generally represents one syllable of spoken Chinese and may be a word on its own or a part of a polysyllabic word. The characters themselves are often composed of parts that may represent physical objects, abstract notions, or pronunciation. Literacy requires the memorization of a great many characters: educated Chinese know about 4,000. The large number of Chinese characters has in part led to the adoption of Western alphabets as an auxiliary means of representing Chinese.
Jijiupian
The original "Jijiupian" consisted of 32 sections ("zhang" 章), each with 63 Chinese characters, totaling 2,016. Some later editions of the text add two more sections, each with 64 characters, thus totaling 2,144. The text was designed to include as many different characters as possible, with little repetition, in order to maximize the student's exposure to and learning of new words. The text is described as a sort of abecedarium (Goodrich 1975: 220, Yates 2011: 358).