Chinese character in the context of "East Asia"

Classical Chinese is the language in which the classics of Chinese literature were written, from c. the 5th century BCE. For millennia thereafter, the written Chinese used in these works was imitated and iterated upon by scholars in a form now called Literary Chinese, which was used for almost all formal writing in China until the early 20th century. Each written character corresponds to a single spoken syllable, and almost always to a single independent word. As a result, the characteristic style of the language is comparatively terse.

Starting in the 2nd century CE, use of Literary Chinese spread to the countries surrounding China, including Vietnam, Korea, Japan, and the Ryukyu Islands, where it represented the only known form of writing. Literary Chinese was adopted as the language of civil administration in these countries, creating what is known as the Sinosphere. Each additionally developed systems of readings and annotations that enabled non-Chinese speakers to interpret Literary Chinese texts in terms of the local vernacular.

Traditional Chinese characters are a standard set of Chinese character forms used to write Chinese languages. In Taiwan, the set of traditional characters is regulated by the Ministry of Education and standardized in the Standard Form of National Characters. These forms were predominant in written Chinese until the middle of the 20th century, when various countries that use Chinese characters began standardizing simplified sets of characters, often with characters that existed before as well-known variants of the predominant forms.

Simplified characters as codified by the People's Republic of China are predominantly used in mainland China, Malaysia, and Singapore. "Traditional" as such is a retronym applied to non-simplified character sets in the wake of widespread use of simplified characters. Traditional characters are commonly used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau, as well as in most overseas Chinese communities outside of Southeast Asia. As for non-Chinese languages written using Chinese characters, Japanese kanji include many simplified characters known as shinjitai standardized after World War II, sometimes distinct from their simplified Chinese counterparts. Korean hanja, still used to a certain extent in South Korea, remain virtually identical to traditional characters, with variations between the two forms largely stylistic.

The Tao or Dao (Chinese: 道; pinyin: dào; Jyutping: dou6) is the source and fundamental principle of the universe, primarily as conceived in East Asian philosophy and religions. The concept is represented by the Chinese character 道, which has meanings including 'way', 'path', 'road', and sometimes 'doctrine' or 'principle'.

According to Tao Te Ching, Tao is self-existent, formless, eternal, omnipresent, and is the source of all existence. While all phenomena in the universe change continuously, Tao, as the source of all, remains motionless and changeless intrinsically :

Written Cantonese is the most complete written form of a Chinese language after that for Mandarin Chinese and Classical Chinese. Classical Chinese was the main literary language of China until the 19th century. Written vernacular Chinese first appeared in the 17th century, and a written form of Mandarin became standard throughout China in the early 20th century. Cantonese is a common language in places like Hong Kong and Macau. While the Mandarin form can to some extent be read and spoken word for word in other Chinese varieties, its intelligibility to non-Mandarin speakers is poor to incomprehensible because of differences in idioms, grammar and usage. Modern Cantonese speakers have therefore developed new characters for words that do not have characters for them and have retained others that have been lost in standard Chinese.

With the advent of the computer and standardization of character sets specifically for Cantonese, many printed materials in predominantly Cantonese-speaking areas of the world are written to cater to their population with these written Cantonese characters.

Bi Sheng (972–1051) was a Chinese artisan and engineer during the Song dynasty (960–1279), who invented the world's first movable type. Bi's system used fired clay tiles, one for each Chinese character, and was invented between 1039 and 1048. Printing was one of the Four Great Inventions. Because Bi was a commoner, not an educated person, little is known about his life besides this invention.