Details: This poster shows the Chinese characters for five main elements (L-R): Water, Wood, Fire, Earth, Gold. The background is tan and the characters are written in black. This poster measures approx. 16 x 16
Written Chinese originated some 3,500 years ago in China and employs about 5,000 commonly used characters. Unlike English words, which are composed of letters, written Chinese words are made up of characters. It is popularly believed that Chinese characters represent words. In fact, individual characters represent Chinese morphemes (the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning) and their meanings are generally dependent on context.