Learning written Chinese is a daunting task for foreigners, requiring a knowledge of several thousand characters to achieve basic literacy (although the language itself has many tens of thousands). Telling them apart and memorising them all will take the average Chinese schoolkid half a dozen years, so goodness knows how long it could take a part-time non-Chinese student.
Shao Lan Hsueh, a Taiwanese entrepreneur, has invented what she calls Chineasy, a visual system that she claims makes it easy for anyone to get the hang of logograms. Her concept involves simple illustrations of the linguistic expression of individual strokes from various characters that match the meaning of the symbol. These “building blocks” will enable learners to memorise speedily and in a fun way.