Start learning Chinese characters for FREE at In this video I go over a method for quickly memorizing Chinese characters using mnemonics. It allowed me to learn over 3,000 characters and achieve Chinese literacy, and is the method that HanziHero teaches to help our users do the same. My purpose for this video is to distill the method, which has a lot of moving parts, into its core essence. The other blog posts or videos I have seen that cover this method I found way too long (40+ minutes! Are you kidding me!) by focusing too much on details. I do not cover some of the intricacies around modifying pinyin initial and finals slightly to make them fit easier into the method, as HanziHero itself does. If there is interest in covering that further, I can make another video just going into that part. We also have a page on our website that gives a high-level overview of the method for those that prefer reading: 00:00 - Intro 00:27 - Chinese character basics 01:24 - Mnemonics: what and why 03:50 - Character mnemonic example 04:31 - Using the mnemonic 05:02 - Work involved per mnemonic 05:29 - HanziHero supercharges this method 06:18 - Conclusion