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.
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.