| Each
character represents a word or idea. The earliest characters were pictographs,
or simple pictures representing a thought or object being described. These pictographs
developed into more complicated forms called ideograms. For
example, the word for landscape is made up of the two words or characters for
mountain ("shan") and water ("shui"). These opposite forces
of nature are combined to create the spoken and written term for landscape. The
evolution of these two characters can be seen below. | 
