In what direction is Chinese written?
Traditionally, Chinese was written from top to bottom and then right to left. This is still the method preferred in Taiwan, but the People’s Republic of China has switched to the European style of left to right, top to bottom. What are the differences between simplified and traditional Chinese characters? Chinese characters have been evolving throughout their usage. In the 1950’s, the Chinese Communist government sped this process up by starting a program of massive character simplification with the goal of improving literacy rates. This involved replacing characters with new forms that required fewer strokes to write or combining several characters into just one form. Sources for the new simplified characters included common handwritten short forms, archaic character variants, and other characters with the same pronunciation. Simplified characters are currently used in mainland China and Singapore, while traditional characters are still in use in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and older overseas
