This Dictionary refers to the Ministry of Education’s list of 3,000 essential Chinese characters. The pronunciation also conforms to the Ministry of Education’s standards. It contains over 14,000 Chinese phrases and idioms. Characters are arranged according to their spelling in the Hanyu Pinyin phonetic system. To help learners learn and practice characters, a stroke-by-stroke diagram accompanies each one. Also contained in each character are the traditional and simplified forms, Hanyu Pinyin and Zhuyin Fuhao (Mandarin Phonetic Symbols) phonetic systems, radicals, stroke numbers, phrases, idioms, and English definitions. For greater ease of use and flexibility, we have provided five indices to the dictionary: Pinyin, Zhuyin, radical, stroke number, and frequency. If one learns the 3,000 characters in this dictionary, one will be able to recognize 99 percent of the characters published in various Chinese media.