Most foreign students who come to learn Chinese in China know that there are totally 56 peoples in China. Accordingly, there should be various ethnic characters. Han people, Hui people and Man people use Chinese language. And there are 12 minorities have their own characters such as Mongolian, Tibetan, Uyghur people, Kazakhstan, Yi people, Dai people, etc.

These ethnic characters all have a long history. The characters used by Mongolian are alphabetic writing that is written vertically. The foreigners who study Chinese in China should know that some of the Mongolian living in Xinjiang a kind of alphabetic writing based on the Mongolian.

When you attend to school to study Mandarin in China, teachers may tell you that there are four different Dai characters for Dai people live in different areas in Yunnan. Since Mongolian use two kinds of characters, Dai people use four and Hui people and Man people use Chinese characters, 17 characters are used by 15 ethnic peoples.

Most of the Lisu people who believe in Christian use a kind of character like the capitalized Latin letters. There still some more ethnic groups use their own characters. But foreigners who learn Chinese in China should know that there were 24 kinds of characters were used by 21 peoples before the new China.