Written script is an important part of culture and an invaluable cultural treasure. Written symbolsare considered to be carriers of culture, crystals of human wisdom, the essence of humancivilization, and a pearl-like artifact illuminating the progress of human beings. To be able tocommunicate through writing is something highly remarkable and exclusive to human beings.Nowadays, Chinese culture and its carriers are increasingly appealing to international scholars andfriends, who are eager to have an overall and in-depth understanding of Chinese characters. In theTCSOL (i.e. teaching Chinese to speakers of other languages), current and future learners of Chineselanguage also show interest in learning Chinese characters. This book, written in English, presentsthem with the basics about the development and structure of Chinese characters; it hopes tofacilitate their learning of Chinese characters and Chinese culture, which in turn promotesinternational communication and dialogue.？ This book consists of ten chapters.Chapter 1 explores the origin of Chinese characters, introducing Neolithic signs as embryonic formsof Chinese characters, and ancient pottery signs as the precursor of Chinese characters,differentiating between linguistic and non-linguistic symbols.Chapter 2 sketches the forms of Chinese characters along the history of evolution, including oraclescripts, bronze scripts, great seal scripts, small seal scripts, clerk scripts, cursive handscripts, regular scripts, and running hand scripts.Chapters 38 are devoted to the "Liu Shu" principles (six logographic principles) respectively. Thecompositional motivation of characters is explained and illustrated with sample characters. For mostof the samples, this book provides the form variations of oracle scripts, bronze scripts, and smallseal scripts. For some characters, there is no final conclusion about the particular forms, so therelevant forms are left out.Chapter 3 explains the pictographs denoting the humani