In most of the books on chinese characters, it is been said that characters can work in different ways. The most common are: Pictographic characters At first, most of the Chinese Characters were a graphic representation of an object, person,… 日 (rì) day, sun 山 (shān) mountain 水 (shuǐ) water Ideographic characters Easy to relate, these characters express a concept or idea. 上 (shàng) up 下 (xià) down 一 (yī) one 二 (èr) two 三 (sān) three In addition to the above, there are combinations of these concepts in many Chinese characters: 森 (sēn) three trees ( 木 ) represent a forest. 休 (xiū) a person resting by a tree. 语 (yǔ ) the word right side is the character for “word,” right-above is “five” and below is “mouth”, the words spoken by five mouths (people) is a “language”.