I ordered Heisig's the 'Remembering the Simplified Hanzi' last week as you may know if you read my post about my excitement. Whilst learning with this method I am still going to be carrying on learning sentences from books and carrying on with Rosetta Stone (although I have been finding my progress in it rather slow recently.)

I won't be doing much preparation before I start this method of learning the Hanzi. Though, I did hunt out the list of all of the 1500 Hanzi characters published in his first book to see what I would be trying to overcome. (Thanks to John @ Chinese Quest for helping me find them. Also check out his great post about the Heisig method and its criticisms)

If you want to download the excel file with all the hanzi, hanyu pinyin, stroke numbers and lesson numbers for the first Heisig book (this is the ANKI file for simplified hanzi in excel essentially) I include the link here for you.

Heisig & Richardon say that these characters (shown below) are the most frequently used 1000 hanzi plus some additional Chinese characters that make sense to learn with the primitives learnt along the way.

(If you would like to download the sample chapter from their book Remembering Simplified Hanzi 1: and give this method a go yourself you can do so here. I have breifly looked over it, but havent commited to learning them yet. I will start when the book gets here.)

Below, I list the hanzi in order they are taught in Heisig & Richardson's 'Remembering Simplified Hanzi'. It really serves its purpose for me because I wanted to print them out and stick them up in my room. But also illustrates quite how many characters I aim to learn and how dizzy 1500 hanzi can make the uninitiated.

That is the first 150 hanzi ^ And only 1/10 of the way through the book.


That brings us to 300 hanzi, and will only be a small victory.

500 so far... ... If I am learning 15 hanzi a day I will reach this just after a month of learning.

750 hanzi. Chinese characters starting to make my head spin a little.


1000 hanzi. This is how far Greg got in 6 weeks. It is certainly something to aim for.

That is the first 1500 Chinese characters that Heisig proposes we remember. That is a lot of Chinese characters to take in, in one go. Having done some quick maths, if I learn 15 a day from now until my birthday on January 20th 2010. I should be able to complete the first 1500 hanzi thanks to Heisig and you guys for inspiring me.

Here are the hanzi all printed out and stuck up in my room. :D Whilst at the moment they are achieving not a lot by being there. By my 22nd birthday I hope to be able to understand them all.



So here is to Heisig. And here is to to a journey of learning many Chinese Characters. Here is to remembering the hanzi. Hopefully I will see you on the other side.