As the overseas students who come to learn to speak Chinese in China all know, Chinese characters can be divided into the simplified characters and the complex characters. Some students may be interested in the appearance time of the simplified Chinese characters. As a matter of fact, the systematical simplification and classification of the Chinese characters began in the 1950s while the movement of advocating the simplification of Chinese characters began in the 1920s. The phenomenon of simplifying the Chinese characters has appeared a long time ago.

According to the research, we can see that the simplified Chinese characters appeared as early as in the inscriptions on bones or tortoise shells of the Shang Dynasty. At that time, the ancient Chinese people used the simple drawing to stand for the complex characters. In the later dynasties, the simplified Chinese characters appeared over and over again. In fact, the characters such as 寿、准、麦、万and礼appeared as early as in Han Dynasty which were all simplified. In the periods of Tang Dynasty, Song Dynasty and Yuan Dynasty, many characters such as 庄、亲、旧 and枪that we use today were simplified.

After studying the modern simplified characters in the first and second tablets in the Simplified Character Tablet of 1968 version, some scholars found that 49 characters were originally seen in the pre-Qin period among the 338 simplified characters used in modern times. In addition, 62 characters were originally seen in Han Dynasty, 24 in Wei, Jin and the Southern and Northern Dynasties, 31 in Tang Dynasty and 29 in Song period and 74 in Ming and Qing Dynasties. Some of the students in qualified Mandarin program might be told that there is only one character appeared after the foundation of the New China among the total 338 characters.

In the beginning of the 20th century, many scholars proposed to use the simplified characters which are popular in the folk in the formal situations. The famous scholars such as Qian Xuantong, Li Jinxi, Yang Shuda and Hu Shi also agreed to carry out the simplified characters. In the year of 1909, the Chinese language educator Lu Feikui published the paper of proposing the application of the simplified Chinese characters in the magazine Education, which was the first time to published the application of the simplified characters.