Chinese Characters: The Art and Meaning of Hanzi

by James Trapp

Chinese Characters introduces readers to the art and meaning of Hanzi. Beautifully illustrated with Chinese characters, this book includes a pronunciation guide, standard definitions, and explanations of each character featured. Each Chinese character is displayed on its own page, allowing readers to examine the intricacies of its form and meaning. An introduction details the history of Chinese characters and the way it has developed over the years. It even explains how digital technology has affected the use and art of Chinese characters.

Genres: Nonfiction, Reference

96 pages, Hardcover

First published April 11, 2010

Reviews

[Nadinastiti · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book which list basic Chinese characters and its meaning, philosophies, and history. The unique part of this book is that this book is produced using traditional Chinese bookbinding that was developed during the Ming dynasty in which single sheets ofpaper are printed on one side, folded in half with the printed pages on the outside.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice little reference book that gives you a taste of knowledge about a few different things. The book is like a jumping off point into other topics. It could benefit from color coding the characters to show which is the phonetic and which is the radical. By the end I could pick out some but not always. It would have also been nice to see a chart of the old oracle bones that characters were based on.

I like that it went into the history of the language as a whole and broke down each character. In art history we always learned about Johannes Gutenburg and the printing press, but we never learned about the Chinese version that came before it. It just didn't quite spread because its harder to make little carvings for thousands of characters as opposed to just 26 letters. I thought that making the book in a traditional binding style was a nice touch too. The part of me that wants to nitpick doesn't like that the other side of the page isn't used because its one long sheet folded like an accordion. But its interesting to see how books used to be bound. I also liked the sneak peak into Confucianism. I hear about him on occasion while reading Chinese literature so I want to take a look at his writings too.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Birthday gift from Ma and Ba.

[Nicole Li · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is more of an art piece to be left out. The characters are actually traditional Chinese and not helpful if you are studying mandarin itself.

[Will Harrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

AMAZING book!!! :D For anyone aspiring to learn Chinese who's interested in good stories about the culture & history behind the 'characters' :) Chéngyǔ are essential which I didn't know before this book but now I'll keep my eye out when I explore China & reference this book as need be

[TJ Shelby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating. Quick fun educational read.