How Chinese Writing Works

Not a phrasebook and not twenty pictures of mountains. Some characters really are worn-down drawings, a few are two meanings joined - three trees is a forest - and most are a meaning-part plus a sound-part. The meaning-part is the half you can see, so a child who learns one of them can tell what a character is about without being able to say it. No tones and no dialogue: this teaches reading meaning, not speaking Mandarin.