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.
Manchu alphabet
The Manchu alphabet was also used to write Chinese. "Manchu: a textbook for reading documents", by Gertraude Roth Li, contains a list comparing a romanization of Chinese syllables written in Manchu compared to Hànyǔ Pīnyīn and Wade–Giles. Using the Manchu script to transliterate Chinese words is a source of loanwords for the Xibe language. Several Chinese-Manchu dictionaries contain Chinese characters transliterated with Manchu script and the Manchu version of the Thousand Character Classic is actually the Manchu transcription of all the Chinese characters. Also existing as a transliteration was the Manchu version of the Hong Loumeng (紅樓夢).