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the Hardest Chinese Characters to Write

Zhé and zhèng both have 64 strokes which puts them at equal top on the list of Simplified Chinese’s hardest characters to write. However there are three problems with declaring them Simplified Chinese’s most complex characters. Firstly, they are actually traditional characters that just don’t have simplified versions (because they haven’t been used for thousands of years). Secondly, as they haven’t been in use for thousands of years, you’re not going to come across them in your reading. And thirdly, are they really so complex? Look closely at both characters. “Zhé” is just the traditional character for dragon, 龍 (long), written four times (this is known as a quadruplicated character). Likewise “zhèng” is a quadruplicated character based on the traditional character for rise or flourish, 興 (xīng). And you’d think if the two characters were to make a sudden and unexpected reappearance into modern Chinese, then they would each use the simplified character multiplied by four. The modern character for rise/flourish is 兴 which only has 6 strokes (for a total of 24), and dragon (龙) only has 5 (a measly total of 20 strokes), so hardly contenders for the longest Chinese character.To get more news about chinese alphabet, you can visit shine news official website.

Biáng has attained a certain fame as the most complex Chinese character of them all. However, again there are a few issues surrounding it. The character has a very, very specific meaning: it is used in the name of a traditional Shaanxi noodle dish. There are arguments that it isn’t a standard Chinese word (proof of this, there is no pinyin sound for biang). Some argue the word should be classed as Shaanxi dialogue, while others believe the character is just a made-up invention by some clever Shaanxi noodle restauranteur. Note also that the traditional character has 58 strokes, and though this is the version that is always used in the restaurants, the simplified version has ‘only’ 42 strokes which is slightly less complex.

Because zhé, zhèng, bèng and biáng are all problematic in the contest to be China’s hardest character, some will argue that nàng is the real winner. This is because unlike the others, it is actually in modern usage. It comes first for most number of strokes in the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters. However it is still a pretty rare character to come across, it doesn’t even appear on the Modern Chinese Frequency List of the 10,000 most common words.

The character with the most strokes to appear on the Modern Chinese Frequency List is yà with 35 strokes. According to the list it is the 6,957th common character, or very low frequency. Even many well-educated Chinese won’t know this character.

Huáng, with its incredible 172 strokes, is generally regarded as Chinese writing’s most fiendishly difficult character. The character however is shrouded in mystery, as scholars have tried to determine both its source and meaning. Some believe it is just a made-up or nonsense word. Others argue that it isn’t a character at all, but an ancient Daoist magic symbol used to ward off evil, cast spells or heal. These ancient Daoist practitioners used to invent complex talismans made up numerous characters (think ‘abracadabra’ but on a much grander scale).

Which characters comprise huáng and how many are there? Well this step-by-step instruction for writing the character will give you an idea: start off with the rain character (雨) at the top, then under it three fields (田), then under them five earths (土). This makes up the top row. On the second row, on the left and right sides are the characters for return (回) and cloud (云). Between them are two fly and earth characters (飞, 土) on the right side, a phoenix (鳳), and a dragon (龍), and to their left another couple of earth characters. Under it, on the third row, add the wind (風), deer (鹿), wind, and under them earth with two deers inside, all bookended by two mountains (山). Finally all of them are placed on the walking radical (辶). Not that hard, is it!
Ancient Chinese writing also used the pattern of four of the same character to make a new character. Both léi and the next character on our list, houyou, repeat a character four times. They are not especially complicated to write, just very time-consuming, and some experts have wondered if they aren’t perhaps just I Ching pictograms.