Chinese dictionary, words/ideographs ordering

[Léa Massiot]

Hello,

Thank you for reading my post.

I am wondering how Chinese dictionaries are constructed.
In English, if I want to find the definition for the word "tree", I open a dictionary, look for the words beginning with a "t", then for the words beginning with the two letters "tr" and so on...
Another example: suppose I want to know how to say (and how to write) the word "tree" in Chinese.
How do I do?
What does an English <-> Chinese dictionary look like?
How are Chinese words/ideographs ordered?
What would be the "position" of the Li (李) characters in a Chinese dictionary?

Thank you and best regards,
--
Léa