  We show that the Zipf's law for Chinese characters perfectly holds for
sufficiently short texts (few thousand different characters). The scenario of
its validity is similar to the Zipf's law for words in short English texts. For
long Chinese texts (or for mixtures of short Chinese texts), rank-frequency
relations for Chinese characters display a two-layer, hierarchic structure that
combines a Zipfian power-law regime for frequent characters (first layer) with
an exponential-like regime for less frequent characters (second layer). For
these two layers we provide different (though related) theoretical descriptions
that include the range of low-frequency characters (hapax legomena). The
comparative analysis of rank-frequency relations for Chinese characters versus
English words illustrates the extent to which the characters play for Chinese
writers the same role as the words for those writing within alphabetical
systems.
