The Elements of Chinese

A map of what Chinese characters are made of.

The poster shows the most common components of Chinese characters in red, with the characters they build clustered around them. The closer to the centre an element sits, the more common it is — so the whole thing reads at a glance as a picture of which building blocks do the most work in the language.

It's a genuinely nice thing to look at, and a useful thing to have on a wall.

Now includes the reference sheet

This product used to be the poster alone. It now comes with the Elements of Chinese reference sheet as well — a companion chart listing all 214 Kangxi radicals and their variants, plus other common components. The poster shows you the shape of the language; the reference sheet is what you look things up in.

Previously the reference sheet was only available inside the Master Pack. It's included here at no extra cost.

What you get

Two PDFs:

• The Elements of Chinese poster — designed at 40 × 50cm, scales to any size without losing quality (it prints happily at A3 or A4)
• The Elements of Chinese reference sheet — all 214 Kangxi radicals, variants, and common components

How it works

Download and print at home, or take the files to a print shop. Nothing is shipped.