system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How do you text in Chinese?

To my understanding, the Chinese language is composed of complex characters that usually represent words. So how do you text with a language on a limited keyboard?
gpt
Pinyin and knowing the tones. 

Chinese has a writing script based on roman alphabet which is what kids and beginners use when first learning the language. This is called pinyin. This is basically the phonetic transcription of the language. 

There are then 4 corresponding tones in Chinese. Flat (1), Rising (2), Falling-Rising (3) and Falling (4). 

The word 'train-station' in Mandarin is huǒchēzhàn. So you type it out like that but add the tones by adding a number after the corresponding character. (But not every character has a tone.)

So huǒchēzhàn would be huo3che1zhan4 and this would type out as 火车站