Truth be told, Chinese characters are difficult to recognize and it is even harder to digest their meanings.
But since you have chosen Chinese as a foreign language you determine to learn well most probably due to your passion and interest, you need to understand Chinese characters without any excuse.
Chinese characters differ from English words so much except that the Chinese alphabet can give a good impression to English speakers.
The letters in Chinese alphabet are all English letters.
They are relatively easy to learn for English speakers.
But the characters always make people crazy.
Even one Chinese word in at least two phrases appears quite different in meaning.
Now we have an example.
You know "China" means ZhongGuo, and another Chinese phrase or zhongxing, means neutral.
In the two phrases they all include zhong.
But they have very different meanings.
The first one cannot be separated from guo to understand.
It means a nation named China.
While the second one can be separated.
It means "in the middle level or degree".
This is one typical example for you to learn the meaning difference in Chinese words.
Such things are many in Chinese language.
If you want to learn more things about Chinese words, you must learn more.
But how to overcome this obstacle for you? Ways are many.
You just need to choose your favourite.
But I think reading Chinese is a very effective way to learn Chinese characters.
Certainly if you hope to read, you need to fully prepare to go into hard work and flexible ways of thinking.
Hard work doesn't mean you need to read Chinese poems or ancient Chinese everyday.
You know even Chinese people can't understand such ways of writing.
It is the same to the fact that English people can't even understand ancient English or Medieval English.
It just means that you need to read as much as you can.
But you need to choose the suitable materials to read.
At the same time you need to communicate with Chinese people as often as possible and try to understand what they say, even each Chinese character.