There are a lot of Chinese characters, but no one can tell the exact number. We can only know its approximate number from ancient and modern dictionaries. Xu Shen's "Shuowen Jiezi" of the Eastern Han Dynasty contains 9353 characters. During the Cao Wei Dynasty, Li Deng's "Sheng Lei" contained 11,520 characters. King Gu Ye of Nanliang's "Jade Pian" contains a total of 22,721 characters. In the Tang Dynasty, Yan Zhenqing's "Yunhai Jingyuan" contained 26,911 characters. "Ji Yun" written by Ding Du and others during the Song Dynasty contains 53,525 characters. The "Kangxi Dictionary" written by Zhang Yushu and others in the Qing Dynasty contains 47,035 characters. The contemporary "Chinese Dictionary" contains 54,678 words, which is currently the dictionary with the most words.
Development of Chinese character fonts
After primary school, we need to be able to read a total of 3,000 characters, of which about 2,500 must be able to write.
The evolution of Chinese characters
The evolution of Chinese characters has generally gone through several stages, including oracle bone inscriptions - large seal script - small seal script - official script - cursive script - regular script - running script. This is in line with the development of characters from complex to simple, from irregular to standardized. Oracle bone inscriptions, large seal script and small seal script can be collectively referred to as seal script. Then, seal script, official script, regular script, running script, and cursive script constitute the five types of Chinese calligraphy. With the development of Chinese characters today, regular script and running script are still used, but seal script, official script, cursive script, especially seal script are no longer used in daily life, and only exist as an art of calligraphy.