A challenge! First of all, [1] is ridiculous. Second of all, you just do it recursively. I would describe the first example roughly as follows: Walking radica

A challenge! First of all, [1] is ridiculous. Second of all, you just do it recursively. I would describe the first example roughly as follows: Walking radical (162); cave top (116); to the left a left-right combination with "moon" on the left (74) and a thread radical (52) above "long" (168) on the right; in the middle "speech" (149) above "horse" (187); to the right, a left-right combination with thread above "long" on the left, and a knife radical (18) on the right; under all of that, a heart radical (61). Numbers refer to the chart here http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/radicals.php http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/radicals.php In practice, it is very common for two Chinese people to meet for the first time and explain to each other which characters their name are. This normally does not involve pulling out pencil and paper.