Each language has its own form, standing for certain voice in the language and expressing certain meaning.Chinese language is typical ideographic writing system and the form and structure of the characters can indicate the meanings of them to a certain degree. The teachers who teach Mandarin language in class may tell you that Chinese language has processed the transition from picture writing to ideographic writing just like other languages of ancient Egypt and ancient Babylon. However, the vitality of those languages has lost gradually and become the researching objects while only Chinese language is being used till now.
Of course, Chinese language has the longest life and being used by the most people in the world. It is also the language system that preserves its historical reformation the best and the most completely. Chinese characters are the most completed writing in preserving the national culture. As the writing has the longest history among so many languages in the world, Chinese characters have close relationship with the culture of China.
On one hand, Chinese characters are ruled and limited by the Chinese culture. On the other hand, the Chinese characters also have profound influence on the culture of China. As a kind of analphabetic writing,Chinese language has amazing character set. There are 4500 single character sets only in the found inscriptions on bones or tortoise shells of the Shang Dynasty. According to the statistics of Xu Shen in 100, there were 9353 character forms of small seal style.
One important point that the overseas students who intend to learn Chinese language need to learn is that every one Chinese character was created by the men of letters in each dynasty and generation. Since the stricture and formation of Chinese characters have certain basis and regularity, thousands of characters are just as worthwhile as thousands of works. Of course, the Chinese characters record the development history of Chinese civilization, including the glory and disasters, the joy and hardness, understanding and confusion. The books written by Chinese characters are accumulated as fantastic books treasures.
The structure and the form of Chinese characters as well as the written books recorded by the characters reflect all sides of Chinese nation and culture. The influence of Chinese culture to Chinese characters is implied in Chinese characters system, reflecting the special cultural factors of Chinese nation‘s psychological states, values, life styles, thinking pattern, ethic codes and customs and so on.