Many students who study Chinese find the hardest part of learning Chinese to be writing the Chinese characters (Hanzi). Although currently China and Singapore are using the Simplified Chinese characters, there still exist many mind boggling Chinese characters that are comprised of many strokes.

Some candidates for the most complicated Chinese Character include:

The first two actually have 64 strokes each, and it would be hard to find a competitor that has more strokes than 64. (If any reader finds out, please inform me!) Incidentally, the first character is made up of four “Dragons”. The third character in the list has 52 strokes, which is not too bad.

However, all three have repetitions of a single word, and hence are not that complicated in the strictest sense of the word.

If we are looking at the most complicated (non-repetitive) Chinese word, I think the title belongs to Biang, which is used in the term Biangbiang noodles. I have eaten it once in a Chinese restaurant in Singapore, it is a bit like dry Ban Mian.

Biang has 58 strokes, and as one can see, is nothing but simple. Thank God this word is not commonly found in spelling tests!