In the eyes of many foreigners, Mandarin Chinese is one of the most difficult languages to acquire. Of all the elements such as pronunciations, tones, and characters, Mandarin writing is the most difficult skill to achieve. Chinese writing has always looked beautiful and artistic, but it's no easy for foreigners to learn how to write Chinese.

Why is Mandarin writing so hard to learn? When it comes to English language, you can just spell out the words if you know the pronunciation. Unlike English, Chinese writing has no rules to follow. There's no connection between the pronunciation and characters. The writing system is another system totally different from the speaking system. If you check the Chinese dictionary, you'll see that there are two ways to find a character. The first is by pronunciation(pinyin), and the other is by radicals. If you don't know the pinyin of a character, you have to look it up by Chinese radicals. So it's really important to learn how to write Chinese.

First, you should know how a Chinese character is put together. Radicals are the basic characters from which all other characters are formed, via radical combinations. Traditional Mandarin writing has 214 radicals, while the number of radicals found in the simplified form of writing depends on the dictionary maker, though it tends to be about 200 radicals.

You should keep the general rules for strokes in mind. The rules include: top strokes before bottom strokes; horizontal strokes before vertical strokes, when two cross each other; central strokes before two side strokes, known as the "wings"; left-slanting strokes before right-slanting strokes; go left to right; top left to bottom right; and outside to inside, finishing the inside before closing the outside, if the outside has a border.

When you learn Mandarin writing, begin with the easiest characters with relative few radicals. Learn the basic strokes and their directions, because the basic strokes are vital to your writing skills. You should practice the strokes again and again. It's also of great importance to know the difference between a writing brush and a pen. A writing brush is used in ancient Chinese. So if you want to learn Chinese calligraphy, you can choose a writing brush. But remember a pen is more widely used in modern times since calligraphy is more considered as an art form. 

After you learn the basic Chinese characters, you can turn to a Chinese dictionary to learn more characters. There are simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese. The traditional Chinese looks more complicated than simplified Chinese. In most of mainland China, simplified Chinese is wildly used. However, traditional Chinese is still officially used in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

After you have a basic command of the Chinese writing, you can join an online language exchange course where you can meet with a Chinese speaker by exchanging voice/chat lessons in Chinese. Exchange e-mails or chat in Chinese so that you can improve your writing abilities in Chinese. Ask your language partner to correct your writing. You can scan in pictures of your handwriting in Chinese and e-mail them to your language partner. If you have a friend who is fluent in Chinese, take every chance to practice with him. Just keep practice and never give up, you'll find that learn writing Chinese online is not that difficult.