Chinese characters, also known as Hanzi, are the gene of Chinese culture and the carrier of Chinese history. Chinese characters and Chinese culture have gone hand in hand for thousands of years together. This lecture introduces various theories about the origin of Chinese characters, including the Cangjie Invention Theory, the Eight Trigrams Theory, the Knotting Rope Theory and the Pictogram Theory. It describes the evolution of Chinese characters from Oracle Bone Inscriptions, Bronze Script, Miniscule Script, Clerical Script to Regular Script. It also covers the word-formation methods of Chinese characters, such as Pictogram, Self-explanatory, Associative Compounds and Phonogram. Chinese characters are the key to understanding Chinese culture, so let’s learn about them together.