Imagine what it’s like being dyslexic with thousands of Chinese characters to remember

There are altogether more than 50,000 Chinese characters. The average educated Chinese person is said to know about 8,000, while reading a Chinese newspaper requires knowledge of about 2,000 to 3,000 of these characters. Based largely on memory, learning Chinese can be daunting, and even native speakers forget words now and then.

But for about 10 per cent of the Chinese population, daunting is an understatement – their mother tongue is almost entirely Greek to them. This group of people – the estimated population affected by dyslexia in China and Hong Kong – struggle with recognising, reading and dictating Chinese characters despite their normal intelligence, adequate schooling and conscientious study.

Fortunately, in Hong Kong there is a strong infrastructure for identifying, diagnosing and supporting dyslexic children – initiatives that have been developed since the late 1990s when public awareness of the condition grew and parents demanded more support.

In China, however, support for dyslexia – let alone awareness of the condition – is lacking. The recently launched charity China Dyslexia Foundation hopes to change that.

“It’s estimated there are some 15 million students affected by dyslexia in China, but unlike in Hong Kong and the rest of the developed world, in the mainland there is essentially no government support, a handful of service providers, and tremendous ignorance amongst parents and teachers resulting in few children receiving help,” says social entrepreneur Yvonne Li, founder and chairperson of the foundation.

“There is almost zero awareness of dyslexia among the general public in the mainland. All this creates prejudice against children with dyslexia, and in an academically driven society, dyslexic students are seen as lazy or having a bad attitude.”