how many characters do you have to know to be literate in chinese
Some of them may only have ever appeared a few times, so there is no need to be put off by this huge number. The number of characters in common use is much much smaller. According to research, if you are familiar with the 500 most common characters in Chinese then you can read 75% of modern Chinese. If you know 1000 characters, you can read 89%. 2000 characters gives you 97% coverage.