Are Chinese symbols built from more elementary symbols or forms? I know nothing about the Chinese language but, while we ate in a Chinese restaurant with lots of Chinese symbols around me, I asked myself if these symbols could be built up from elementary lines or forms (like our words are made up out of 26 letters). Is that the case?
explanation in modern day research:

we use components (部件), to "build up" chinese characters; and there're 1316.

http://chardb.iis.sinica.edu.tw/system_intro.jsp

basically, we have 8 types of stroke (筆畫) to compose each component.

about the "structural relations and configuration regularity" of components, have a look of this page; in english and traditional chinese:

http://other.allad.com.tw/chinese2/teacher_e.php