"Writing" and "Chinese Writing" response

I've taken away from these articles an entire new appreciation for language and writing. The adaptation of our little 26 letters from its early Semitic roots amazes me in how compact they were able to develop this system and how efficiently it works for the purpose that our society need. This is not to say that Chinese is inefficient or that it does not satisfy their requirements. On the contrary all the writing systems discussed in the article "Writing" are best suited to their language it serves. Our seemingly simplistic system juxtaposed to the logograhic script of the west seems almost inferior. We can arrange these letters into a multitude of texts that can serve a toddler as easily as it can serve the highbrow. We may not understand the specialized writing for genre specific settings however, it is not beyond our reach to do so. The complexity with which I imagine that can come from learning 4,000 characters in order to be considered literate would be a dauting task for a person like me with no knowledge of the language. Therefore, I wondered how are their children taught. Western cultures will sing the "ABC" song allowing it to become part of a child's oral vocabulary ever before they are ready to learn to hold a pencil. What are the fundamentals, the basics steps taught to the children in logographic systems? Where do they begin?