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The influence of Chinese writing and oriental culture on James Joyce's major writing is the focus of this paper. It opens with the origin of his exposure to Oriental history and culture in Dublin which would later find expression in his writing from Dubliners through Finnegans Wake. The influence of the graphic elements of Chinese writing extend Joyce's oriental outlook which influenced his visual sense of the page. The creation by Joyce of "Oriental time" and the impact of Chinese on Joyce's sense of visual modernism, seen clearly in Ulysses and the Wake, form the body of the paper which also considers the history of Chinese printing and the way the spatial organization of Joyce's novels reflects the traditions of Chinese writing. The importance of verticality in Chinese script, plus the convention of commentary appearing alongside texts, are also considered in Joyce's melding the spatial, auditory and vertical elements of his writing, what he calls the "verbivocovisual" in Finnegans Wake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]