The Complicated & Simplified Chinese Character

Have you been to Hong Kong or Taiwan? Did you know some of their characters are different from mainland of China?

你去过香港或台湾吗？你知道他们的一些汉字跟中国大陆是不一样的吗？

When you set the language keyboard of Chinese, you will choose Chinese (Simplified) or Chinese (Traditional).

当你在设置语言输入法（中文），你也会面临选择简体还是繁体。

“Complicated characters”, or traditional characters, and “simplified characters” are two terms in a relative sense. If there are two or more ways to write a character, the one containing fewer strokes is known as a simplified character, and the other is a complicated one. For example: 书-書, shū, means book; 国-國, guó, means country.

汉字的繁体和简体是相对的。如果一个字有两种或两种以上的写法，那么笔画多的称为繁体，笔画少的称为简体。例如：书-書，国-國。

 Why there are two different terms?

为什么存在两种形式？

There have been simplified and complicated characters ever since they came into being. Complicated characters consist of many strokes, therefore they are difficult to write. To reduce the difficulty the Chinese people never stop improving their writing of them. In 1956 the Chinese Government promulgated The Scheme for the Simplification of Chinese Characters, and in 1964 A General List of Simplified Chinese Characters was issued. There renewed list of simplified characters that was publicized in 1986 after some modification, contains 2235 characters as the standard written Chinese symbols. 

汉字自古以来就有繁体和简体两种形式。繁体字笔画较多，不方便书写。为了减轻汉字的难度，人们不断进行汉字的简化工作。1956年，中国政府发布了《汉字简化方案》，1964年正式发表了《简化字总表》，1986年，经过个别调整重新发表了《简化字总表》，共收录简化字2235个，一次作为简化字的规范。

Some people think simplified characters reduce the difficulty, but it loses some parts’ meaning in the same time.

有的人觉得简化字虽然减轻书写难度，但是失去了部分的意义，比如爱-愛

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