We propose an invariant descriptor for recognizing complex patterns and objects composed of closed regions such as printed Chinese characters. The method transforms a 2-D image into 1-D line moments, performs wavelet transform on the moments, and then applies Fourier transform on each level of the wavelet coefficients and the average. The essential advantage of the descriptor is that a multiresolution querying strategy can be employed in the recognition process and that it is invariant to shift, rotation, and scaling of the original image. Experimental results show that the descriptor proposed in this paper is a reliable tool for recognizing Chinese characters.