Chinese characters

logographic writing system with Han origin used in the Sinosphere for Chinese, Japanese, Korean and traditional Vietnamese languages

7 dated entries naming Chinese characters, drawn from 7 separate years between 535 CE and 1782 CE. Nothing here is written by us: each line is the sentence a Wikipedia year article used, and the link beside it opens the exact revision.

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6th century

535Significant to the history of agriculture, Chinese author Jia Sixia writes the treatise "Chimin Yaoshu" in this year, and although it quotes 160 previous Chinese agronomy books, it is the oldest existent Chinese agriculture treatise. In over 100,000 written Chinese characters, the book covers land preparation, seeding, cultivation, orchard management, forestry, animal husbandry, trade, and culinary uses for crops.source

10th century

978One of the Four Great Books of Song, the Taiping Guangji, a Chinese collection of deities, fairies, ghost stories and theology, is completed. The collection is divided into 500 volumes and consists of about 3 million Chinese characters.source
983One of the Four Great Books of Song, the encyclopedia Imperial Readings of the Taiping Era is completed in 1,000 volumes, of 4.7 million written Chinese characters.source

11th century

1013The Four Great Books of Song, the Song dynasty Chinese encyclopedia Prime Tortoise of the Record Bureau which has been compiled since 1005, is completed in 1,000 volumes of 9.4 million written Chinese characters.source

14th century

1375In Nanjing, capital of Ming dynasty China, a bureau secretary of the Ministry of Justice, Ru Taisu, sends a 17,000 character-long memorial to the throne, to be read aloud to the Hongwu Emperor. By the 16,370th character, the emperor has been offended by several passages, and has Ru Taisu summoned to court and flogged for the perceived insult. The next day, having had the remaining characters read to him, he likes four of Ru's recommendations, and instates these in reforms. Ru is nevertheless castigated for having forced the emperor to hear thousands of characters before getting to the part with true substance. The last 500 characters are elevated in court as the model-type memorial that all officials should aspire to create while writing their own.source

18th century

1716The Kangxi Dictionary is published, laying the foundation of most references to Han characters studied in the future.source
1782In China, the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries is completed, the largest literary compilation in China's history (surpassing the Yongle Encyclopedia of the 15th century). The books are bound in 36,381 volumes (册) with more than 79,000 chapters (卷), comprising about 2.3 million pages, and approximately 800 million Chinese characters.source