chinese is used by the han people in china and other ethnic groups in china who are declared chinese by the chinese government. many people in autonomous regions of china speak other languages. chinese is almost always written in chinese characters. they are symbols that have meaning, called logograms. they also give "some" indication of pronunciation, but the same character can get very different pronunciations among the different kinds of chinese. since chinese characters have been around for at least 3500 years, people in places far from each other say them differently, just as "1, 2, 3" can be read differently in different languages.