[gizmo686]

I can't speak directly to Chinese, but I am studying Japanese, which has a writing system derived from Chinese. Essentially each character can be broken up into smaller components (called radicals). This allows characters to be ordered somewhat 'alphabetically'. In theory, the radicals also carry some sementic and phonetic meaning, although (at least in Japanese) many characters have deviated significantly from what you would expect from the roots.

Also, although Japanese has been (through deliberate effort) simplified to about 2,000 characters needed to be considered literate, it still takes until high-school for students to be able to fully read and write all 2,000.