A student shows Chinese characters he wrote. [Photo/Chinaculture.org]

Recently, the online Chinese course from the China Cultural Center in Tanzania explained the origin of Chinese characters, including their structure, the meaning of expressions and other cultural features. The course was enjoyed by students.

Chinese characters are composed of horizontal strokes, left falling strokes, vertical strokes, dots and other basic strokes. It is difficult for non-native speakers to understand the meaning of different characters. In order to solve this problem, the center showed some pictographs with simple shapes and obvious symbols to the class, to help them better understand the meaning of Chinese characters. For example, the character “山”(shan) looks like a big mountain, and it means mountain; the character “水” (shui) looks like a winding river, and it means water; the character “火” (huo) looks like the shape of fire, and it means fire. Moreover, the teacher also shared some background stories of Chinese characters with the learners, so they can understand the allusions of these characters, and the learning process can be more interesting.