Mnemonics for Chinese Characters: A Companion to Remembering Simplified Hanzi by James Heisig

When I started learning Chinese in November 2019, I was struggling. I had such a hard time remembering what characters looked like whenever I practiced Duolingo. I knew (or at least, hoped) there had to be a better way.

I found out about the Heisig method for learning Chinese characters in December, bought the books, and haven’t looked back since. Heisig’s books have helped me tremendously; I learned 817 characters in the first 30 days. 

I was hooked. Instead of bumbling around with memorizing a bunch of arbitrary lines, Heisig proposed a framework that allowed my knowledge of one character to build off of characters I had learned in the past. 

The only problem is that Heisig stops including the actual stories after character 500. It is then on the reader to come up with these stories themselves. I started writing down each one of my mnemonics in a notebook, but I found that my overall recollection of words did not increase (or decrease) when I used my own mnemonics vs. Heisig’s, but I was spending a lot more time trying to come up with creative stories. 

In this companion book, I provide my simple, yet memorable mnemonics for over 1,500 Chinese characters. Nearly all of the primitive elements that Heisig identifies in his original book remain intact; if one of my stories doesn’t work for you, feel free to swap it with your own.

I hope this book is able to save you time so that you can be faster and more effective in your Chinese language journey.

**If you're not 100% happy with your purchase, contact me and I'll refund you in full!**