Chinese is the oldest continuously used written language in East Asia.
The earliest known Chinese writing appears on oracle bones from the late second millennium BCE, especially during the Shang dynasty. These inscriptions recorded questions and rituals and already show many structural features of the Chinese writing tradition.
Chinese writing developed through forms including bronze inscriptions, seal script, clerical script, and regular script. Although the shapes and conventions changed substantially, the tradition remained continuous rather than being abandoned and later recreated.
“Chinese” can refer to a large group of Sinitic varieties, including Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu, and Min. These varieties may differ greatly in pronunciation, while written Standard Chinese provides a shared formal standard. The writing system is primarily morphosyllabic: characters generally represent a syllable and a meaningful unit, rather than individual alphabetic sounds.