History of education
Although there are more than 40,000 Chinese characters in written Chinese, many are rarely used. Studies have shown that full literacy in the Chinese language requires a knowledge of only between three and four thousand characters.
Chinese characters
The most complex Chinese character still in use may be "biáng" (pictured right, bottom), with 58 strokes, which refers to Biang biang noodles, a type of noodle from China's Shaanxi province. This character along with the syllable "biáng" cannot be found in dictionaries. The fact that it represents a syllable that does not exist in any Standard Chinese word means that it could be classified as a dialectal character.