Study chinese in china

month   月[yue] (the fourth tone) This character is actually a picture of the moon, with the two horizontal lines representing the left eye and mouth of the mythical“man in the moon.” (Actually, the Chinese see a hare in the moon, but it is a little farfetched to find one in the character.) And one month, of course, is one cycle of the moon.
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day   日[ri] (the fourth tone) This character is intended to be a pictograph of the sun. Recalling what we said in the previous frame about round forms, it is easy to detect the circle and the big smile that characterize our simplest drawings of the sun—like those yellow badges with the words, “Have a nice day!”
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mouth   口[kou] (the third tone) Like several of the first characters we shall learn, the character for mouth is a clear pictograph. Since there are no circular shapes in the characters, the square must be used to depict the circle.
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ten   十[shi] (the second tone) Turn this character 45° either way and you have the X used for the Roman numeral ten.
As a primitive, this character sometimes keeps its meaning of ten and sometimes signifies needle, this latter derived from the character for needle 针. Since the primitive is used in the character itself, there is no need to worry about confusing the two. In fact, we shall be following this procedure regularly.
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nine   九[jiu] (the third tone) If you take care to remember the stroke order of this character, you will not have trouble later keeping it distinct from the character for power力. When this character is used as a primitive, we shall take it to refer to the game of baseball, the meaning being derived from the nine players who make up a team

eight   八[ba] (the first tone) Just as the Arabic numeral “8” is composed of a small circle followed by a larger one, so the character for eight is composed of a short line followed by a longer line that leans towards it without touching it. And just as the “lazy 8” ∞ is the mathematical symbol for “infinity,” so the expanse opened up below these two strokes sometimes carries the sense in Chinese of something “all-encompassing.”
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six   六[liu] (the fourth tone) The primitives here are top hat and animal legs. Once again, we glide over them until later.
 

five   五[wu] (the third tone) As with four, we shall postpone learning the primitive elements that make up this character. Note how the general principle we just learned in the preceding frame applies to the writing of the character for five.

four   四[si] (the fourth tone) This character is composed of two primitive elements, mouth 口 and human legs 儿, both of which we will meet in the coming lessons. Assuming that you already knew how to write this character, we will pass over the “story” connected with it until later.
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two    二 [er] (the fourth tone) Like the Roman numeral II, which reduplicates the numeral I, the character for two is a simple reduplication of the horizontal stroke that means one. The order of writing goes from above to below, with the first stroke slightly shorte