Nah, I think in China they chat with characters. People even send SMS with characters(although I have no idea how they do this, perhaps one of our friends from over there could explain it). It's true Chinese children are taught pinyin at an early age as it's easier to teach pronunciations of characters that way. The Chinese - Chinese dictionary I have explains pronunciations of characters by listing another character pronounced in the same way and the pinyin to make it absolutely clear. But seriously, in addition to being an eyesore, it would be kind of strange to write with pinyin. It wood bee as if eye awl weighs rote like this. Except much worse, since Chinese has a lot more homonyms than English does. It's not so bad in context, I guess, but if you were trying to display only one or two words for whatever reason, let's say a brand name, it could be disastrous.

By the way, about body movement and tones, it's not a bad idea for non-native learners to learn that way either. One of my friends could simply not pronounce the fourth or falling tone until I used TY Chinese's suggestion that he stomp his foot every time he said it. Worked like a charm

About chinaphonique, yes, very good brettique writing style Could I suggest "chinaphone", though?

BTW, have you heard of the bopomofo system? Looks kind of neat, sort of the way Koreans made a syllabary that mimics Chinese characters. Much nicer looking than pinyin, IMO.