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".
A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language
Williams' preface to "A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language " explains, "The number of characters in this work is 12,527, contained in 10,940 articles, and placed under 522 syllables, which follow each other alphabetically, aspirated syllables coming after the unaspirated. Those syllables which begin with "ts", on account of their number, are placed by themselves after "tw'an"" (1874: ix). The additional 1,587 characters are differently written variant characters. For instance, the standard character 醫 for "yī" "medical doctor" has 酉 "wine vessel" indicating medicinal wine, but the earlier variant character 毉 has 巫 "Chinese shaman" indicating shamanic healing.