Xiangqi on the other hand has characters that are easy to remember. I play it against computer on my iPhone and after a couple weeks of playing I easily distinguish them at a glance.
Chinese chess characters are much easier to remember if you think about the piece they represent and then see how the symbol actually abstractly depicts that.
Horse: four dots on the bottom of the character should remind you of a four legged animal.
Chariot/rook: imagine a cart with two large wheels and then think how it would like from above. I actually think of it as some kind of ship sail.
Red side bishop/advisor: looks like a stick man holding a piece of paper. Makes me think of an official who is writing something down or reading.
Black bishop/elephant: if you look at it it actually looks like a cartoon stick elephant. On left lower side are tiny legs. In center is either the trunk or large tusk. The square on top of the symbol almost certainly represents a saddle where the archers or commanders probably sat. That's how it is in Indian original chess pieces.
Pawns/soldiers: black one looks like a soldier's head with a traditional Asian helmet that has flaps over the ears. Maybe resembles Mongolian hats.
black. Not sure what the black one looks like but it does have four sticks like they could be legs and arms.
Cannon: Stuckman standing next to some weapon which is probably the cannon.
king's guards. Stickmen
King: I am not sure about this one at all. They just look like the most squiggly symbol of all.
I did some construction work for Wa and Tori Shogi as well. These games are played with drops, so distinguishing sides by color does not work. I therefore used some cheap Shogi sets for obtaining the pentagonal tiles, and put stickers on their faces to get the piece images I wanted. Two regular Shogi sets is just enough to make a Tori and a Wa set, if you have them share two pieces. (Kings and Cloud Eagle / Right Quail, which do not promote and are thus single-sided). I used the mnemonic pieces, but of course you could do this with any piece images you want. The Wa set looks like this: