A Chinese characters competition for elementary school students and teachers in Shanxi province was launched by Shanxi’s Department of Education and Language Work Committee in September.

The competition was held with the aim of promoting the students and teachers’ study and command of the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters, a standard list of 8,105 Chinese characters that was released by the State Council. It will last until July in 2015 through four stages, including promotion, pre-training, competition and final evaluation.

Some Chinese linguists as well as some senior Chinese teachers in the province were invited for the competition’s pre-training and questions surrounding the 8,105 characters’ reading, writing, paraphrasing and use.