Hello~~~, I am Tony!!!, who's still alive as well. To celebrate our survival, I am more than happy to answer your question based on the best of my very limited knowledge. ^_^ When I was a kid, my dad had a very old dictionary, which indexed Chinese characters according to the radicals and strokes, it's called "四角号码字典". I didn't get how to use it though had been taught a few times, since it's complicated of the rule, which's not existed now. Nowadays, in computer systems, Chinese charaters are ordered by the first letter of pinyin after Roman numerals and English letters. Say for example: "123--》321--》abc--》cba--》zzz--》阿--》白--》蔡--》..............--》周..." On the paper, usually there is no specific order, including of namelists. So we often see a statement above the listed names, that is "排名不分先后", meaning no sequence for listing names. However, it's sometimes ordered by the number of strokes of the surname, though it dosen't happen often. Wish my answer could be helpful. Merry Xmas and happy new year!

It can be ordered by the number of strokes of Chinese characters.

there is no alphabetical order of Chinese symbols

in chinese book dictionaries they do alphabetize the pinyin to help you search but to find a character that you don't know the pinyin you have to follow these steps. I find that a chinese book dictionary is broken into many parts to help you find the characters. lets find 草 for example. the first few pages are a list of all the radicals organized by stroke order 1 to (i forgot). for example 艹 which is a total of 3 strokes 一丨丨thats under 3. the next few pages are those radicals on the first few pages. Under each radical header like 艹 are the characters that START with that radical. they are organized by stroke order. In our example of 草 the bottom part of the character is 6 strokes 早 so under the 艹 look under 6 strokes. once you find it the book will give you the pinyin for the character. finally in the back of the book is the list of characters and meanings in pinyin from A-Z (note pinyin does not have V) and you just look for the pinyin just as you would look up an english word in an english dictionary happy studying.

Hello~~~, I am Tony!!!, who's still alive as well. To celebrate our survival, I am more than happy to answer your question based on the best of my very limited knowledge. ^_^ When I was a kid, my dad had a very old dictionary, which indexed Chinese characters according to the radicals and strokes, it's called "四角号码字典". I didn't get how to use it though had been taught a few times, since it's complicated of the rule, which's not existed now. Nowadays, in computer systems, Chinese charaters are ordered by the initial letter of pinyin, and Chinese characters are after Roman numerals and English letters. Say for example: "123-->321-->abc-->cba-->zzz-->阿-->白-->蔡-->........" On the paper, usually there is no specific order, including of namelists. So we often see a statement above the listed names, that is "排名不分先后", meaning no sequence for listing names.