Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Working out which bus you need in Beijing can be difficult if you can't read Chinese.
Memorizing how to handwrite Chinese characters—simple or traditional—is a mission
that takes years of dedication. For good or bad, however, the importance of this has been
somewhat demoted by smartphones and computers, which have made the need to handwrite
characters all but obsolete. Outside of a school environment, the only time you may need to
physically write out characters is when you're suddenly required to fill in a form with your
name or address. It's not that people are moving away from using characters but rather that
modern devices make it easy to instantly generate characters. Just type in the Pinyin, choose
the correct character from the options that pop up, then continue to the next word. Your
learning needs to be only deep enough for recognition rather than generation. These days,
