Given the large number of categories, or class types, in the Chinese language, the challenge offered by character recognition involves dealing with such a large-scale problem in both training and testing phases. This paper addresses three techniques, the combination of which has been found to be effective in solving the problem. The techniques are: 1) a prototype learning/matching method that determines the number and location of prototypes in the learning phase, and chooses the candidates for each character in the testing phase; 2) support vector machines (SVM) that post-process the top-ranked candidates obtained during the prototype learning or matching process; and 3) fast feature-vector matching techniques to accelerate prototype matching via decision trees and sub-vector matching. The techniques are applied to Chinese handwritten characters, expressed as feature vectors derived by extraction operations, such as nonlinear normalization, directional feature extraction, and feature blurring.