Chinese characters and the link between language and culture

Written in 2011, while I was studying Mandarin Chinese in Taipei:

Learning to write Chinese was not my priority when I came to study in Taipei. My purpose in learning the language (or what little of it I could absorb in three months) was to converse; to speak some Chinese and develop some listening comprehension. The intricate characters themselves just seemed too dense and problematic to put any real effort into. I thought this aspect of the course, learning to read and write the characters, would have to be tolerated but would provide no joy.

Somewhere along the way, perhaps in the first week of my course, I felt my interest shift. Writing Chinese characters, which I first thought would just be a pain in the ass, has been an enriching and emotional experience. Not to say that learning speaking and listening skills hasn't been meaningful. But, despite how much time is required to memorize the characters, I've found a certain meditative peace in reading and writing, whereas the other aspects have provided as much frustration as reward.

Much has been written about the connection between language and culture, and certainly the best way to understand that connection intimately is to learn a language that uses a character-based system. Compared with the grace of Chinese writing, the alphabet used in English and other Western societies feels downright clinical.

Learning to write Chinese characters (I know about 300 now) has infused me with certain cultural predispositions in ways I couldn't have predicted. Specifically, having learned Traditional characters has now created a bias within me against Simplified characters. But there is no way to develop an affinity with either Traditional or Simplified without also forming attachments to the cultures in which they're used. Consider this: the Simplified system was developed primarily (though not completely) by the Communist regime of mainland China to improve literacy rates. The Taiwanese have proudly held on to Traditional characters as much for cultural as political reasons.

Those who are from mainland China would counter that Chinese characters have been evolving through different forms for thousands of years, and that Traditional writing is simply an arcane system that is impractical in the modern world. Considering that those who use each system are from specific geographic areas with their own political sovereignty, for me to express my own preference for Traditional script is bound to imply that I also carry certain political or cultural biases.

And it's somewhat true. As I think about continuing my Chinese studies in Vancouver, the one aspect I dread is that I will have to re-learn my characters in the Simplified format. The thought of abandoning the style of characters that I've been steeped in is offensive. The culture that has passed this knowledge to me has done so with a certain pride and appreciation. For me to abandon Traditional characters for Simplified would feel like a betrayal of sorts, not just to the culture that taught me, but toward my own attachment to the characters, whose strokes have left indelible impressions on my psyche.

These 300 characters that I know are 300 little pieces of Taiwan that are in my heart. But as the personal is also political, certain other biases start to creep in. I write the character for "Love", for instance, knowing that each part is related to love – the top represents "accept" while the middle is a "heart" and beneath it "perceive". However, the heart is omitted from the Simplified form. Leave it to the Communists to have no heart! And there I go, letting my love for the writing transfer some of its cultural and political biases. It's one thing to just prefer one script over another, but try to defend Simplified to a Taiwanese, or Traditional to an average mainlander, you will be in for an exchange of heated words rooted in homeland pride.

It's obvious that I have my preference. If I had learned Simplified first, I'm sure I'd be loyal to that system and would feel relieved that I didn't have to go through the hassle of learning the more complicated, repetitive-strain-inducing Traditional characters. But it didn't happen that way. Every traditional character I write is now infused with a fragment of a memory – of sitting in the NTNU library for hours scribbling in my notebook as I prepared for dictation tests, of my teacher, of my classmates, of overcoming my struggles, of the friends and people who helped me study, of practicing my Chinese with Tzuching's family, of my daily life in Taiwan. Each character is like a Rorschach inkblot, conveying its own personality and significance.

Anyone can make a good argument that Simplified characters are more logical, easier to write, and that the Traditional system is full of redundancies. But if the moment comes that I have to write 喜歡 as 喜欢, or 電視 as 电视 , it will not be a relief but a sense of loss.

If I feel that way after only three brief months of study, it gives me a flicker of understanding about how deeply, significantly personal these writing styles are within the people who were born into them.

Both the Traditional and Simplified systems have interesting arguments for and against their usage. For a better understanding, read here: Wikipedia: Debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters