I once had a housemate who tried to teach me some simplified Chinese written characters (hanzi). Nothing too complex, just me 我, you 你, coffee 咖啡 and tea 茶, so on and so forth. But even with such an easy lesson, I realized that some connections were harder to make than others. I was able to match the the vocalization to the meaning: Wǒ is I/me. And I would see 我 written on the page and go ahead and think ‘yes, that’s I/me’. But that third connection in the triangle of understanding? Asking me to associate the spoken word the correct hanzi and then write it down? That was hard.
Was it just me? It’s one thing to wrestle with a new alphabet, but a library of 10,000 logographs is a completely different ballpark. And then what happens when multiple systems collide? That’s also hard.
This collision is what Jing Tsu really digs into in Kingdom of Characters. Communication is everything. Language is not just a carrier of culture, it is also a tool that can be used to expand and consolidate power. So, of course, there is a strong imperative to adapt language in an increasingly globalized world. China has always valued its rich literary heritage and, historically, was at the forefront of both papermaking and printing. But technology marches on. By the latter half of the 19th century, much of trade, commerce—and even war—was becoming reliant on new modes of telecommunication. And China was no longer the one taking the lead. Rather, they were trying to recover after a number of rough decades on the international stage.
This is where Tsu begins: many of the newly emerging systems of communication, such as the telegraph, had been designed for use with alphabets. Early international telegraphy recognized only Roman letters and Arabic numerals, leaving countries like China with no easy recourse. How was the country to adapt? Some kind of language reform seemed to be the answer.
How would one design a telegraphic code that could accommodate hanzi? And building on that: how does one develop a typewriter that can handle hanzi? From our modern vantage point, we know there must have been successes—the script is still widely in use today. So how did that come about? As Tsu tells it, it was due to the efforts of individuals such as Wang Jingchun, who advocated for special accommodations for Chinese telegraphic transmissions by devising a four-letter phonetic code for each character, and Lin Yutang, who developed a new method for writing Chinese characters. He also designed the “Mingkwai” typewriter to handle these characters. It was never actually manufactured, but from the descriptions, one can appreciate how innovative he was. Both of these involved breaking down the language in ways that hadn’t been commonly carried out before.
It was not just international relations that were proving to be a problem, China was dealing with internal issues as well. Not all languages in China traditionally use hanzi, and the Qing Dynasty recognized multiple different languages and scripts; within a language, standardization was difficult. Even when taking linguistical diversity into consideration, general literacy was still a problem that had to be contended with. I am not alone: it takes many years to become to become fluent in reading hanzi, and some thought that was stopping the general pubic from becoming more politically involved. One of my favorite figures in the book is activist Wang Zhao, who developed a Mandarin alphabet. This was quite a fascinating endeavor; Wang’s alphabet incorporated some katakana and elements of the Manchu alphabet as well (The story of Japanese scripts could be a book in and of itself). Wang Zhao himself is a colorful character, who is portrayed by Tsu as a man who wanted to help the peasantry rise up and increase their participation in society. However, the fact that he was also pushing hard for the dominance of Mandarin over all other languages didn’t exactly escape my attention. His system was never adopted, but his push for early literacy was not forgotten
He was not alone: interestingly, there was a Soviet push to alphabetize the Dungan language. The Dungan of Kyrgyzstan have roots in the ethnic Hui minority of China. While its use never became widespread, it did show that Soviet Russia was interested in spreading its influence. Like Wang Zhao, they also hoped that it would be easier to radicalize people with higher literacy rates. If only they could read a little propaganda!
However, as I stated above, we know from our modern vantage point that hanzi was never supplanted by an alphabet, and other solutions were found in order to standardize communication in China. Radical language reform happened after the defeat of the Nationalists, and both pinyin and simplified characters were introduced under Mao* . Mao too, liked the framing of the idea that the ‘masses were the true heroes,’ and higher literacy helped with that. Again, though, I have to point out that standardization also helped spread Mandarin. And his propaganda.
The computer age brought in a whole set of new challenges. I’ve had colleges at work point out how short sighted the creation of Unicode was outside of the ‘anglosphere’, but I didn’t know about all the maneuvering Taiwan pulled off to have their own coding classification recognized, based on the more traditional characters rather than the simplified ones. Tsu also tells the story of Zhi Bingyi, who played a integral role in how we digitally process hanzi—who, as a political prisoner, had to write his code on a lid of a teacup due to a lack of paper.
And this is where I get to the slight flaw of Kingdom of Characters—I enjoyed reading about all the historical characters who played a role int he shaping of the language in the 20th century, really do. You could easily see cinematic adaptions of the lives of both Wang Zhao and Zhi Bingyi, for example (Wang’s would be very dramatic.) But I do wonder whether or not the concentrated focus on these people pushes the ‘great men of history’ narrative a little too much.
But otherwise, I can see how Kingdom of Characters won a Pulitzer Prize. And it will be interesting to watch China in the following years; I’m sure they’ll be able to make advances in computing without relying so much on foreign support. They look like they’ll be the ones taking the lead again.
I’ll be content to just order a coffee in Mandarin for now.
*While we’re talking about Mao here: 毛澤東 or 毛泽东? Mao Tse-Tung or Mao Zedong? It depends on which period of the 20th century you were referring to him from.