Chinese characters are represented as pictograms which are based on the shape of objects. If you feel even slightly disheartened that you will have to memorize each one of them, then do not worry. Just as the English language learning system is based on alphabets (A, B, C, etc.) which ate a set of characters that represent the phonemic structures of the language; similarly, Chinese learning has about 250 basic and radical characters. Remember that you can combine these Chinese characters or break them in order to easily read, write and understand them.