How many Chinese characters are there?

Over 80000

Chinese is an extremely difficult language, but, at the same time, a fascinating one.  Believe it or not, there are over 80000 Chinese characters.  Not all of them are used these days.  It is interesting to know the fact that for basic reading and writing of modern Chinese, people only need a few thousands.  Keep in mind the fact that Chinese is not alphabetic, so the writing is not related to its phonetics.  This is extremely interesting.