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 Chinese Symbols
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Beauty |
Buddha |
Butterfly |
Dolphin |
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Chinese is an ancient and influential language, and until the eighteenth century over half the books in the world had been
written in Chinese. It is not an alphabetic writing system like those familiar in the west, but rather each individual word
is given its own distinctive symbol or character. Literacy requires knowledge of around 4000 characters, and a large dictionary
will contain over 40,000 characters ordered by form or sound.
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Dream |
Eternity |
Friendship |
God |
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Early characters reflected the objects they represented, with symbols becoming more arbitrary as the language developed.
The building blocks of the language are about a thousand basic characters, covering terms like river, woman, horse, love
and quarrel. Compound characters can be formed from these, an example being the character for "harvest"
and "year" being represented by "man" carrying "grain."
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Longevity |
Love |
Luck |
Peace |
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The most ancient known texts were found inscribed on cattle bones and tortoise shells, and these were used as oracles by court
diviners of the Shang dynasty (1766-1122 BC). The beauty and antiquity of these symbols make them attractive for meditative,
decorative or talismanic use today, and this page presents some suitable examples.
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Tranquility |
Unity |
Virtue |
Wealth |
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Chinese astrology is based upon a twelve-year cycle, with each of the twelve years named
after a particular animal. The Chinese symbols for these astrological signs are detailed on our page of
Chinese Astrological Symbols.
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