This paper discusses the definition of literacy and the law of literacy. The author first defines literacy as to establish a correct, steady and automatic link among the shape, the pronunciation and the meaning of Chinese characters. Based on this definition, the author put forward five laws of literacy, namely to establish a correct link among the shape, the pronunciation and the meaning of Chinese characters from the authority; to learn new characters based on familiar ones; to get better learning effects by understanding Chinese characters in specific contexts; to consider the previous experiences of the students; to provide chances for students to use new characters again and again. As a conclusion, the correct direction of literacy teaching is to enlarge the vocabulary of the students. And the amount of positive vocabulary is the fundamental measure of literacy teaching.