Chinese characters are one of the four independent inventions of writing, which are logographs with a documented history of over three millennia. Ideographs could either be pictographs visually depicting objects or concepts, or fixed signs representing concepts only by shared convention.

The earliest characters that have been confirmed so far are carved on tortoise shells and wild animal‘s bones, which are called Oracle Bone Inscriptions made during the 13th century BCE, as part of divinations conducted by the Shang dynasty royal house.

Chinese characters are composed of strokes that are written in a fixed order.