Chinese characters are an important symbol and carrier of Chinese civilization. The inheritance and dissemination of Chinese characters are the two wings of Chinese culture. In addition to the past handed down and unearthed documents, the study of Chinese characters in the new era has entered the cross-cultural field. The study of cross-cultural Chinese characters has become a new trend in the study of Chinese characters, that is, using cross-cultural methods to study Chinese characters and Research on Chinese characters in a cross-cultural environment. The current cross-cultural Chinese character research has made many achievements in the history of Chinese character transmission, the collation of foreign Chinese books and Chinese character materials, and the comparison of crosscultural Chinese characters. The foreign Chinese books and Chinese character materials produced by Chinese characters in a cross-cultural environment show the distinctive characteristics of Chinese characters under the influence of different cultural factors.

The widely accepted understanding that a Chinese character has three factors, i.e., form, sound and meaning, takes sound and meaning into the account of the Chinese Graphology; this has too broad a scope. On the other hand, the view that “Chinese Graphology is in essence the study of the graphic shape” is too narrow. From my observation, Chinese characters have three properties of their own: shape, constitution and function. To start from here may in necessity attain three branches of it, that is, the study of Chinese graphic constitution and the study of Chinese graphic functions, each forming a system of its own. These three systems do not stand in parallel, nor in layers, but three independent and not severed planes of the noumenon of Chinese characters. In other words, they constitute what the Chinese Graphology should concern. This may be termed “the Three-Plane Theory of Chinese Graphology”. A dozen years of researches of ours have proved that this theory, and the study of Chinese graphic function in particular, have both important theoretical and wide-reaching practical values.

Shape analysis ought to be emphasized in the teaching of Chinese characters. The primary methods to analyze the form of Chinese characters are incarnated in ShuoWenJieZi includeing analysis on component function, analysis on form variation and analysis on isomorphic part, all of which afford us as references that merit academic attention in modern teaching of Chinese characters. The paper introduces the method of structure analysis from ShuoWenJieZi, focusing on how to draw lessons from these approaches in the teaching of Chinese characters and illustrating key points in practical application as well as effects that may achieve.