I'm going to attempt a cake that combines 3 themes: Year of the Tiger, Mardi Gras, and Valentines - I know, crazy combination
My question is, I would like have chinese symbols on fondant and I'm not comfortable doing freehand so what would be the easiest way? Stencils? Transfers of some sort? I can't get my head around how to do this... 
stencils is probably the easiest......but you could also hand paint using black food coloring (americolor) and a paintbrush. Print out the pattern you want (mirror image) trace over the outline heavily with a pencil, then flip the pattern over onto the fondant covered cake and gently rub (with the pencil) on the bakc of the pattern over all the lines of the image. when you peel off the paper template you should have a nice outline of the chinese symbol and then you can just carefully paint it in with a small paintbrush and black americolor gel colors. Easy peasy. HTH
I did these using a Makins Clay gun. I used the small flat rectangular disk. I couldn't find a stencil and didn't want to make one. I layed it out on parchment and let it dry...worked well.
http://cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1517322
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