Chinese symbols also referred to as sinographs are one of the oldest acknowledged writing symbols in the entire world.

Evolution of Chinese symbols has undergone three stages which are bamboo inscriptions, oracle and bronze writings and modern inscriptions. The first type of Chinese symbols were written by earliest Chinese from Shang Dynasty on Ox shoulder blades and shells of tortoise, Chinese symbols mainly consisted of pictographs in their most primitive nature. These pictographs of Chinese symbols already comprise few traits of the script from ideogram since Chinese language did not consist of alphabets.

The other type of older Chinese symbols are bronze writings which were either paragraphs or words set into bronze vessels or engraved on the surface of impressed bronze vessel. Followed by these both type of writing is the bamboo writings or inscription, this involved writings on a wooden slip with black ink and a brush to write with. One slip consisted of only a single line each consisting of maximum 40 Chinese symbols and minimum of ten symbols. A book was made by joining all the slips of one article and preserved for future generations. Books made out of these bamboo slips gave way for the evolution of paper books being used in these modern times.

Presently, the Chinese symbols used are both traditional and simplified versions. Traditional Chinese symbols are still in use in Hong Kong, Macao and all other Chinese speaking societies except Malaysia and Singapore outside of the country China. Simplified Chinese symbols were generated with minimum usage of strokes and making the proportion of traditional Chinese symbols plain. Few Chinese symbols were simplified in such a way that an individual cannot find any similarity between the simplified version and its traditional counterpart. However, few symbols could not be laid finger on by these simplifications and had to be retained in their original state.