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The Languages of China and the Chinese Language
1. THE LANGUAGES OF CHINA
[Title slide] My title might seem contradictory or at least paradoxical: The
“languages” of China—plural—and the Chinese “language”—singular. [Outline
for today and next week]
--[China/USA slide] Here’s a slide I showed the first week, but some of you
missed it. It’s good to bear in mind the relative size of China.
--The international borders that China claims today were established in 1795,
during the Qing Dynasty. After a series of successful wars against nations on its
periphery, China was larger than it had ever been. The Chinese heartland is the
home of the Han people, the vast majority within China. [population density
map] When we refer to “the Chinese people” we usually mean the Han people. But
within China’s international boundaries are 55 minorities, including Tibetans,
Mongolians, Kazakhs, Uighurs, Koreans, Manchus, and many other groups who
are different from each other and from the Han. They live in China and are Chinese
citizens, but they are not the heirs of Chinese civilization, literature, history, or
tradition. The minorities vary greatly in number: from as few as 1,000 to as many
as 15 million; they also vary in their degree of assimilation to Han culture. Some of
the largest minorities are proudly independent and even have their own writing
system. You know what Chinese characters look like. By contrast, here is Tibetan
[Tibetan]; here is a public pronouncement in Uighur [Uighur]; you will see that
Uighur resembles Arabic script; and finally, here is the Manchu script [Manchu].
--All of the minorities together make up roughly 70 million people, a large number
but still a small fraction of China’s 1.3 billion. However, the lands occupied by the
minorities make up more than half of the nation’s total land area [China’s Borders
slide]. Moreover, these regions make up the strategically important areas that lie
along the borders China shares with Russia, India, Vietnam, and the “Stans” that
used to be part of Soviet Central Asia, with their Muslim majorities.
--It is extremely important to the CCP to project the image of a multi-ethnic China
in which the national minorities are happily integrated. One encounters endless
propaganda celebrating colorful native costumes and dancing, for example. But it
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goes beyond such window dressing. The minorities are accorded a kind of
affirmative action. They are exempt from the one-child policy (I talked once with a
Tibetan guy who had 5 children); there are several minority universities with
relaxed entrance exams; and so forth. So any signs of ethnic agitation are treated
with great seriousness and are usually harshly repressed. As you probably know,
open rebellion has been seen several times in both Tibet and Xinjiang. Within the
last few weeks several Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns, and even a few laymen,
have burned themselves alive in protest. Besides granting special privileges to buy
them off, the government employs three other main tactics: increased funds for
social and economic development, as the minority regions tend to be poor; a heavy
security presence in ethnic regions; and increased Han migration to those areas, so
as to dilute the volatile solution. We can talk further about all these matters during
the question period, if you’d like.
--If we look at a map of the languages of China, we see how complex the picture
is. Suffice it to say that the languages of north China share many features, but are
almost wholly unrelated to the languages of the south [map of Chinese
languages]. Mongolian, Manchu, Korean, and Japanese are related. The linguistic
situation in South China is if anything more complicated. Many languages cross
international borders, between China and Burma (or Myanmar), China and
Thailand, China and Vietnam. [map of South China dialects].
--All right, so much for the non-Chinese languages. Let’s turn to Chinese itself.
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2. THE CHINESE LANGUAGE
--No language is completely uniform, and even today a Roman has trouble
understanding a Sicilian. Few Americans understand Cockney. People who “speak
the same language” may nevertheless be unable to speak to each other. So, dialects
are common. What makes the Chinese language different is the number and
complexity of such dialects. In fact the interconnections between its dialects are at
least as complicated as those which connect a family of languages. Romance
languages, such as French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, are linked to each
other about as closely as the Chinese dialects are [map of Romance languages].
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--French, for example, is not sharply separated from Italian, but rather changes into
its sister language gradually from village to village across the French-Italian
border. Beijing Mandarin is linked to Shanghainese with about the same degree of
complexity. So, from a linguistic point of view, the Chinese “dialects” could be
considered different languages, just as French and Italian are. [2 maps of Chinese
dialects; then map of South China dialects] Here it’s well to remember both the
relative size and population of China and all of Europe [map of population
equivalents]. For example, this useful map shows us that the populations of France
and Hunan province are about the same; Italy and Hubei province; Germany and
Sichuan province; and the Philippines and Guangdong province.
-- So, from a linguistic point of view, the Chinese “dialects” could be considered
different languages, just as French and Italian are. But the Chinese themselves
would insist that they have only one language—Chinese. In China the practical
demands of communication mean that many people must learn different dialects,
but these are never studied as foreign languages, the way a Frenchman might study
Spanish. Educated Chinese everywhere learn to speak enough Mandarin to get by,
but they learn it by just picking up pronunciations different from one’s own dialect.
Of course misunderstandings, often humorous, are common; and everybody can
tell such stories on themselves. But the bottom line is this: the Han Chinese think
of themselves as one people, with a common cultural heritage of some 5000 years.
They feel themselves to be part of the same language community in ways that the
Romance peoples, with their separate national histories, could never do.
--In China the speakers of all dialects look toward a common model. Ultimately,
this is the written language.
--After the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, many of China’s new leaders,
Sun Yat Sen for example, wanted to create a free and independent nation. [Sun
Yat Sen] To make China a unified new nation, one of the first orders of the day
was to give China a national language. Of course China had a linguistic standard,
but it applied only to the written, classical Chinese that had existed for over 2000
years. This was the language of ancient poetry and Confucian philosophy, but not
the modern vernacular. Every educated person had to write in the style of this
rather artificial language. Over the centuries the pronunciations in each part of the
country had changed. Reading a classic Tang Dynasty poem in Beijing would yield
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a sound incomprehensible to someone from Guangzhou, who was reading the very
same poem.
--So it was the spoken language that somehow had to be unified. And no one had
given any thought to how to do this. Of course Mandarin had been the language of
government for several hundred years, and it had the greatest number of speakers.
But Mandarin did not have the most prestige in all eyes. Cantonese were proud of
their dialect, for it had preserved certain traditional linguistic features that had been
lost in Mandarin. Finally, after much wrangling, including at least one fist fight in
the legislature, in 1932 a new Pronunciation Dictionary was published. It enshrined
the variety of Mandarin spoken in Beijing as the national standard.
--Having a national standard did not mean that dialects have disappeared. In the
linguistically complex region of South China, Mandarin added another layer of
language. All government business everywhere is conducted in Mandarin. TV and
radio broadcast in Mandarin. Educational and cultural institutions, both under the
Nationalist government and later under the Communists, used Mandarin. Classes
were taught in Mandarin, although hundreds of thousands of teachers had to
undergo crash courses in Mandarin pronunciation. I remember passing by a
middle school in Wuhan and seeing in big red words on the wall: Please speak
Putonghua! (Mandarin). In other words, don’t use your local Wuhan dialect. In
practice, for schoolchildren, in school means Mandarin; everywhere else means
the local dialect, including of course at home. As one result, it is today rather easy
for someone speaking only Mandarin to function in a city like Guangzhou
(Canton). Enough people speak enough Mandarin—even local farmers selling
melons or tea eggs on the street.
--Here’s another interesting fact. Among Chinese people, there remains a pervasive
and subtle discrimination based on speech. If a Chinese from elsewhere tries to
function in Shanghai without speaking Shanghainese, he will likely complain of
Shanghai snobbery. If she is my student from Fujian province, who comes to
graduate school in Guangzhou—a Cantonese speaking city—locals will be less
helpful in giving directions and will even laugh at her bizarre pronunciation.
[earlier slide of South China dialects] She speaks Mandarin but with a Min
accent. Moreover, it did not help that this girl had a mild case of cross-eyes.
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--I myself have spent enough time in China that I’ve developed some likes and
dislikes. I find especially pleasing the Mandarin spoken by people north of Beijing;
but I don’t care much for the sound of Cantonese. I do love their food, however.
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--Now let’s examine pronunciation in the Mandarin dialect. The sounds of
Mandarin are represented in written form by the pinyin system of Romanization,
developed by the Chinese in the 1950’s and taught to all children. Pinyin means
“phonetic alphabet” or simply “spelling.” The pinyin system replaced various older
systems of Romanization, and that accounts for differences like these: [WadeGiles and pinyin]
--Beijing Mandarin has 405 basic monosyllables. Tones added to these
monosyllables produce approximately 1200 syllabic distinctions. For a language
this is a very small number of syllables. English has many times this number.
Here’s a Table of Speech Sounds. [Table] Sorry for the fuzziness. There are 21
initial consonants followed by 35 finals.
--Mandarin has 4 tones, and every stressed syllable is pronounced with the
distinctive melody of one of these tones [slide 4 tones demonstrated].
--Here are some words with the same syllable but different tones [slide]. As you
can see, you must catch the tones when listening, and you must produce them
when speaking. Change the tone, change the meaning. For native speakers of
English, the tones present a real challenge. Sometimes you can pronounce each
syllable in the sentence perfectly and get most of the tones right, but if you miss a
tone, your listener might scratch his head. As you’ve no doubt found, speakers of
every language differ in their sympathetic imagination: many people really try to
understand you, but some just shut down if you make a mistake. One of my tricks
when speaking Chinese is to speak really fast, so as to create a kind of Gestalt—a
large enough pattern—so that local errors don’t matter as much. Have any of you
ever done that in another language?!
--But to return to tonality. It isn’t that English is not “a tonal language”—we have
tonality--but we don’t attach a tone to each syllable which determines its meaning.
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To complicate things a bit further, in Chinese not every syllable is stressed, and if
it’s not stressed, it doesn’t have much of a tone. Here are some examples: [slide]
--Three more quick points about the tones. First, like all languages, Chinese has
intonation, and this affects the phonetic realization of tones—up to a point. A 4th
tone at the end of a sentence with a question intonation will fall less than one at the
end of a declarative sentence, for example. The second point is a bit scary—some
important dialects of Chinese, such as Cantonese, have not 4 tones but 7, and a few
dialects have 8 or more... One reason I never learned much Cantonese. The third
point about tones: What do you think happens when a Chinese song is sung? See a
problem? If tone determines meaning, how can someone sing meaningfully?
Fortunately, context makes the meaning of songs pretty obvious [audio clip].
--This light-hearted point leads me to an important point. I told you that Mandarin
has only about 1200 syllabic distinctions. This means that homophones are much
more common in Chinese than in English. Of course, we have homophones: what
do I mean by “write” [right, rite, etc.]. Unless you know the context you can’t be
sure. Here’s a funny example: “I saw her duck.” Duck. Are we on a farm or are we
seeing a snowball fight? Context tells us. Well, because of the vast number of
homophones, Chinese people must be highly sensitive to context. And the ability
to see something embedded in its context is a key feature of Chinese culture. It is
hard to overestimate its importance. Understanding a love song is easy for them.
--You might wonder if the sounds of Chinese are difficult to master. As usual, the
tough sounds in the new language are those your native language doesn’t have. For
example, Chinese has no “v” so students must consciously work on that. I had
trouble with some sounds in Chinese.
--Now I really don’t want to wander into the thicket of Chinese grammar and
syntax. Maybe just a few points. The primary syntactic division of a Chinese
sentence is between the topic and the rest of the sentence. The topic is a word or
phrase that sets the stage for the statement or question to follow. It is what the
sentence is about. Not all sentences have topics, but if it has one, it is always said
first; here are two examples: [topical structure sentences]
--This is a good place to pause for questions.
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--Soon after I first went to China to live, in 1985, I discovered how fascinating
Chinese people’s names can be.
--“Tell me about your name,” I asked my student. “Did your parents together
choose it?”
--And Wang Zan Mei replied, “No, my parents didn’t choose my name; my
grandfather did.”
--“Your grandfather! Why him?” I asked.
--“Because he had more time,” she said.
Zan Mei came from a traditional family of Zhejiang province, and her name was
chosen according to traditional criteria. Her grandfather lavished his time and
attention on his granddaughter’s name; and it took her about half an hour to
explain these criteria, their hierarchy, and how they were used. I can’t remember
very many of the details after all these years, but let’s consider a few. Here is her
name, in characters and in pinyin: [slide]
Among other things, she should have a girl’s name, and it is common to include an
indication of the birth season. The reference to plum flowers means she was born
in the winter, since the plum is the very earliest tree to bloom, and much beloved
for that reason. Certain tone patterns sound pleasing; here the 2-4-2 is more
appealing than, say, a pattern of 4-4-4, which would sound harsh and abrupt. I
remember her telling me that one of the most important criteria was the number of
strokes when writing the name. One needs precisely 31 strokes to write these three
characters, apparently a lucky number.
[slide of plum flowers]
A Chinese name will almost always have either two or three characters: a
surname, and a given name of one or two characters. Here’s something interesting:
about 40% of China’s 1.3 billion people has one of the following 10 surnames:
Zhang; Wang; Li; Zhao; Chen; Yang; Wu; Liu; Huang; and Zhou. Among these,
Li, Wang, and Zhang are the most common, used by 250 million people.
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A Chinese saying goes, “The way of the pine is not the way of the willow.” As in
most languages, the given name indicates gender in most cases, though some
names are neutral in gender. Some common given names: [slide]
Now, tell me: do any of you know the three most popular names for baby boys in
America in 2011? {Aiden Jackson Mason} And the three girl’s names? {Sophia
Emma Isabella} Explaining the rise and fall of given names would not be easy,
would it? In China an equally mysterious rise and fall occurs, but with one
difference: for much of their history under communism, Chinese people have
experienced wave after wave of “patriotic” names, although parents pretty much
stopped choosing political names during the 1990’s. In fact a child’s name choice
is one of many indicators of growing personal freedom in China. Daily life has
been increasingly freed from the heavy hand of the Communist Party. In 1985
nearly all university students were assigned jobs upon graduation. They had no
choice in the matter. Now, they must find a job themselves, by no means an easy
thing to do. But let’s return to the patriotic names of the 1950’s, 1960’s, and
1970’s. Untold millions of girls born in the 1950’s and 1960’s bear the given name
“Hong2” – Red. And millions of boys were named things like Wei4 Dong4, which
means “defend Mao Zedong.” I had a female English teacher colleague in Wuhan,
and my friend said, “when you meet this colleague, don’t ask what her name
means.” What’s her name, I asked my friend. “You see, she was born during the
Korean War, and her given name is Kang4 Mei3—Resist America”; he sighed, “It
was a popular slogan then, but her name is just embarrassing now.” During the late
50’s there was a big push to increase steel production in China. So another friend’s
name is Wu4 Gang1 –Wu the family name, Gang meaning “steel.” And maybe
most bizarre example, back in Wuhan I had another colleague, a young man,
whose given name was You2 Yong3 – “swimming.” He had been born in the year
that Mao Zedong demonstrated his vigor by swimming across the Yangtze River
right there in Wuhan!
But beyond the interesting old political names, there is endless charm and interest
in people’s names. I asked my student Huang2 Han2 Xiao4 if she liked her name.
She replied, “Yes, my name is unusual and easy for people to remember.” Her
given name Han2 Xiao4 means something like “potential smile” – the way a face
looks just before a smile appears.
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Some names are sad. My female student was one of eight sisters in a family of
nine—the ninth, finally, was a boy, and his mother was the dad’s mistress, taken
deliberately for that reason. And my student had a younger sister—one of the
eight--whose given name means “hoping for a boy.” That’s what her name means!
One young man was named “Meng4 Hong2” which means “dream of a rainbow.” I
was surprised—it sounded feminine, so I asked him. “My mother, when she was
pregnant, had a vivid dream. And it seemed like good fortune to her.”
One night I was on a chilly sidewalk waiting for a bus, and when the mist began
falling, I shared my umbrella with a delicate and lovely 12 year old girl standing
next to me. We just stood waiting for a while and finally I asked, “What’s your
name?” She replied, “Li2 Xiao3 Yu3.” Xiao3 Yu3 means light rain, or mist, or
literally, small rain.
{ONLY IF APPROPRIATE; ASK JIA LI BO ABOUT HER NAME}
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3. Chinese Writing
--Westerners have long been fascinated with written Chinese characters, but I’d
first like to turn things around and consider Chinese fascination with alphabets.
We must begin in the Ming Dynasty—1368-1644—for during this period China
was beyond doubt the largest, richest, most powerful, and most technically
advanced country in the world. But during these years a mysterious decline set in,
a stagnation that the Chinese have spent hundreds of years trying to understand.
Whatever the reasons, Western Europe advanced, and through its development of
modern science and capitalism and industrialization, through its imperial conquests
around the world, it overtook China. The Chinese had grown complacent and
inward-looking, still arrogantly assuming that they were the center of the world.
The nadir was reached in the 19th century, during the Qing Dynasty. China was
occupied by most of the world’s imperial powers, and parts of its territory were
nibbled away; the Qing court was forced to sign a series of humiliating treaties
with the British in the wake of the Opium Wars, which began in the 1840’s; and
China was riven by internal revolts and disorder.
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--In their struggle to understand how China had fallen so far behind, Chinese
intellectuals identified a number of national weaknesses and foreign strengths: the
foreigners had created advanced industrial societies based on scientific knowledge;
they had built modern universities and taught their children to read; they had
developed democratic systems of government; Western women were able to make
important contributions, while Chinese women hobbled around on bound feet. For
many centuries, China’s relative geographical isolation—with the Pacific Ocean to
the east and high mountains and deserts to the west—this isolation may have
protected China, but it also cut China off from fruitful intercourse with the world.
--And one more difference was widely discussed: Western countries, beginning
long ago with Phoenician merchants, had invented alphabetic writing; and after
that all Western languages were alphabetic. Chinese intellectuals saw the history of
writing as moving from pictorial systems like Egyptian hieroglyphics—and all
early writing was pictorial in nature--towards ever more abstract, non-pictorial
forms. Alphabets, by linking abstract letters to abstract sounds, fostered abstract
thought, such as Greek philosophy. China was stuck with a pre-alphabetic writing
system that had originally been pictographic. Therefore, these Chinese nationalists
came to regard the alphabet as modern, attractive, sophisticated, mysterious, and as
a source of national power. Chinese civilization had been held back by its writing
system, they thought; it must take the last step, by abandoning characters and
adopting an alphabet.
--This attitude was especially strong during the two “revolutionary” decades of the
20th century—the 1920’s and the 1950’s. But by the end of the 1950’s, the
Communist government in China faced so many other challenges—it was the time
of the calamitous “Great Leap Forward”—that something as drastic and
destabilizing as abandoning written characters was postponed indefinitely.
Occasionally one still hears the view that China should adopt an alphabet, but not
often. Let’s now talk about the present.
--If you think about the differences between an alphabet and characters, a question
might occur to you: How does someone use an ordinary alphabetic computer
keyboard to write in Chinese?
In China most computer users type out their Chinese using the pinyin
alphabet keys on a QWERTY keyboard. To generate a character, you type
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out its sound according to the pinyin spelling system. [slide] The computer
automatically converts the Pinyin spelling to the correct Chinese characters
on the screen.
Or at least it's supposed to. You can narrow down the choices by typing in a
digit to indicate which of the four tones it is. If the computer still doesn't
have enough information to pick a character, you'll have to choose from
a pop-up list of possibilities.
The best Pinyin input methods can guess what you mean to say according to
the context and by suggesting the most commonly used characters first. In
this way they function a bit like the text-editing software on most cell
phones.
Another quite different method is to use a bilingual keyboard, which enables
one to construct characters stroke by stroke [slide].
--But let’s now go back to the beginning. Judeo-Christian teaching has it that God
created human speech: “In the beginning was the Word.” In Chinese culture,
however, the origin of speech is never accounted for. To the Chinese, the creation
of language means the creation of Chinese characters; language is writing. Credit
for this invention is given to Cang1 Jie2, a half-god, half-human figure from some
4000 years ago. [Cang Jie slide] The ancient Chinese believed that Heaven had
secret codes, which were revealed through natural phenomena. Only those with
divine powers could decode such things. Cang Jie was able to interpret natural
signs and to transcribe the shapes of natural objects (mountains, rivers, animal
footprints, shadows of trees and plants) into writing. The legend goes that when
Cang Jie created written symbols, the spirits howled in agony as the secrets of
Heaven were revealed. Since then all Chinese have shared an awe for written
language. Shrines to Cang Jie can still be found, and memorial services are still
held.
--Here’s an interesting cultural difference between East and West [slide] : our
word “civilization” comes from the Latin civilis, meaning civil, related to the
Latin civis, meaning citizen, and civitas, meaning city or city-state. The
corresponding Chinese word for civilization is “wenhua” which means “the
transforming power of writing.” I’m not sure if this contrast proves anything, but it
is highly suggestive; and it will become relevant again when we study Chinese
gardens.
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--Chinese characters have been in continuous use throughout China’s history, and
in such a vast country with so many dialects, the written language has been a
powerful force for cultural unity. The characters may be pronounced differently,
but they bear the same meaning everywhere in China. With these characters all of
China’s classic literature and philosophy were written. It’s no accident that the
Chinese invented movable type for printing around the year 1041.
--When you live in China you are surrounded by Chinese characters. Early in the
morning, near the old people doing tai ji in the park, you might see another kind of
physical exercise: ground calligraphy [ground writing] … Here’s the place where
I bought steamed buns for lunch [baozi slide; then teahouse] and here’s a
teahouse with a poetic name. How wonderful Chinese characters look in neon! [2
slides] How many different styles there are! Even today ordinary Chinese will
surround their front door with lucky inscriptions. [slide]
--Every institution of any significance, public or private, will have its name
emblazoned in calligraphy: [2 university slides] and even a modest place may try
to dress itself up by commissioning a grand entrance sign [grand sign slide]. Of
course the most prestigious locations will have impressive characters: [Forbidden
City slide] Here on the wall of The Forbidden City there is no question of an
artistic calligrapher expressing his individuality; no, this is meant to say China
Official. The slogan to the right of Chairman Mao may be translated, “Long Live
the Unity of the Peoples of the World!” For a less serious occasion, lots of free
style writing can be used: [Bruce Lee poster].
--It’s common to see signs using both Chinese characters and English
[supermarket slide]. Here’s a warning sign in a park: [do not stampede]. This
sign uses English, or I should say “Engrish”, to seem modern and chic: [store
sign] Here’s another, just a couple of doors away: [Angel slide]
--Every so often you come upon some deeply interesting signs. One night I was in
an unfamiliar part of the city, walking past the wall surrounding a large hospital.
On the wall were a whole series of information or propaganda posters: [1 poster]
How would you analyze this poster? …My answer: you should adopt a modern
attitude and value a daughter as much as a son. [1 poster] In this next poster the
Chinese government is offering passersby two role models: a pair of happy
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oldsters, the man in blue jeans, out for a dance with his wife. The English sentence
here reads, “Agedness also enjoy sexual life.” And after the dance, when they get
back to the privacy of their apartment… The interesting thing is the apparent need
for such a poster. Clearly, lots of seniors are presumed to feel, “Oh, we’re too old
for that!” They may need a bit of encouragement. Readers are even offered a list
of the benefits of sex in one’s later years.
--Interesting also is how propaganda has changed over the years. This poster is
inconceivable a generation ago. Here’s a billboard I passed in 1986 [Lei Feng
poster] This was part of what was probably the longest-running campaign since
the Revolution: the “Learn from Lei Feng” movement. Lei Feng was a semilegendary truck driver in the army whose Christ-like selflessness made him unique.
Most propaganda, as here, is touchingly naïve, but I don’t think I like what has
replaced it either: modern advertising [China Mobile ad]. But I digress.
--Let’s return to our investigation of Chinese writing. We know that in
Shakespeare’s day, any educated man was expected to be able to write a passable
sonnet. In old China an educated man’s poem should be written in graceful and
elegant characters! An official from the emperor’s court in Beijing, sent to a
remote area for an inspection, would of course stay at many a government inn
along the way. On the whitewashed wall he might write a poem to record his
mood, and he would read the poems written by earlier officials; perhaps his poem
would comment on an earlier one: a kind of elegant graffiti. Actually a good many
of the Chinese emperors themselves excelled in calligraphy. Emperor Hui1 Zong1
(ruled 1082-1135), during the Song Dynasty, created a style he called Slender Gold
[slide].
The calligraphy tradition endures. Here is Premier Jiang Zemin presenting his
calligraphy to a society [slide]; and here is a famous poem by Chairman Mao
[slide]. To me that looks like the writing of a dangerously romantic soul, as indeed
he proved to be.
--Now let’s look at some Chinese characters, to see how they’re structured.
--There are more than 60,000 characters in existence, and they have been classified
in various ways. Many early written signs originated from sketches of objects:
these pictographs physically resembled the objects they represented [slide]. Such
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characters today represent no more than 1-2% of the total. An indicative is a
character made by adding strokes to an already existing character in order to
indicate the new character’s meaning [2 slides of indicatives]. Semantic
compound characters are formed by combining two or more components that
together contribute to the meaning of the new character [“bright” slide then
“trust” slide]. A few moments thought should make it clear that none of the first
three character types—the pictographs, the indicatives, and the semantic
compounds—can provide enough characters in the long run. Moreover, abstract
ideas and grammatical terms such as prepositions and conjunctions were
impossible to represent with iconic signs. The solution was a new type of
character. And this next part is somewhat complex… But today over 90% of
Chinese characters are classified as “semantic-phonetic compounds.” As this name
suggests, semantic-phonetic compounds are a hybrid constituted by combining a
meaning element and a sound element. Let’s look at an example. Here is the
character “host”, pronounced “zhu3”. [slide] It can function quite all right alone.
However, in modern Chinese this character is used as a phonetic element in more
than 10 semantic-phonetic compounds, five of which are illustrated in this table.
The five characters in the first column are pronounced in exactly the same way,
“zhu4”, although they are different in meaning. They share the phonetic element
“zhu3”, which is the right-hand side of the characters. The signs on the left are the
semantic elements, which offer some clue to the meaning of the characters. The
semantic elements, for example “person” or “water”, are pictographs commonly
known as “radicals.” Their function is to hint at the meaning of the characters in
which they appear. At the same time, they also group semantically related elements
into classes. So in theory all the characters with the “person” radical should have
something to do with people. There are 214 radicals in the language.
--Now I’d like to spend awhile on the aesthetics and stylistics of characters. Every
Chinese character is constructed from basic units called “strokes,” which are
arranged in a two-dimensional space. They are applied in black ink by a person
wielding a goat-hair brush. Ideally he has mixed his own ink, using an ink stick, a
small amount of water, and an ink stone for mixing the ink [slide]. The brush, the
ink, the ink stone, and the rice paper are known as “the four treasures of the study.”
The strokes, in themselves, bear neither sound nor meaning—they are simply
component parts. Over centuries eight major stroke types were recognized [slide].
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The strokes may look simple, but they must be rendered exactly as shown, and this
takes concentration and control, as well as a certain freedom. Students learn by
endless practice from a young age. They are helped by certain pointers, which
emphasize order, sequence, and balance. [3 slides] They must also remember the
stroke order for each character: [stroke order slide]
Children always begin by learning the Regular Script, for it is the most
straightforward and standardized. Then in middle school they learn the Running
style, and finally the Cursive style. Let’s look briefly at each of those styles
[comparison of 3 slide].
--The Regular Script reached its perfection during the Tang Dynasty, China’s
Golden Age of Culture (618-907). [Liu Gongquan slide] This slide shows a
rubbing of a stone-carved calligraphy. The Regular script is refined and dignified;
it is written slowly, with the brush lifted from the paper after each stroke.
Characters written in Regular have a precise and clear internal structure. It
emphasizes control, not individual freedom. The writer here, Liu Gongquan, was a
devout Buddhist. He was once asked, by the emperor, how to write upright
characters. Liu replied that it depends on the mind of the writer: when the person
sets the purpose of his life upright, he will be able to write upright characters... As
this story illustrates, Chinese calligraphy is not thought of as a mere technical skill.
The characters must flow directly from the body, and ultimately from the mind and
spirit, of the calligrapher.
--In contrast to the Regular script, both the Running and the Cursive are executed
by linking strokes, writing faster, and with more fluidity and freedom of
expression. The Running and Cursive styles also differ from Regular Script in that
no standards exist for their writing; they are not used in official documents. With
the Running style, the faster speed creates not only kinetics but also softened
corner angles and different linkages between some of the strokes. The strokes have
a spontaneity, a grace and rhythm. The Running style is most people’s everyday
style of writing.
--Writing quickly with the Running style enables one to combine strokes and
simplify characters. Let’s look at some examples: [Run and Reg comparison]. In
the first character yi3 (“according to”) the vertical line and uptick of the Regular
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becomes a dot in Running. The third and fourth strokes in Regular are linked as
one in Running. The result is a very different looking character. Therefore, certain
conventions govern just how the original Regular script character is stylistically
varied. Characters in the Running style are written on one breath.
--The most famous calligraphy in Chinese history uses the Running style. In the
year 353 Wang Xizhi wrote this Preface to the Orchid Pavilion Collection [slide].
Wang had invited 42 literary men to the Orchid Pavilion for the Spring Purification
Festival. While enjoying their wine, the men played a drinking game. Sitting on
both sides of a coursing stream, they waited as small cups of wine were floated
downstream. If a cup stopped in front of a man, he must compose a poem. Anyone
who failed to write a poem had to drink. Inspired by the abundant wine on this
festive occasion, Wang composed his Preface to the collection he intended to
gather of the men’s poems. The result was calligraphy of stunning beauty; and
although Wang tried afterward to write with the same spontaneous joy, he could
never again do so. This piece of calligraphy has influenced Chinese writers for
1700 years.
-- The last of the three main styles, the Cursive style, may be described as the
Running Style on steroids: faster, more creative, more emotionally expressive than
Running [Crazy Zhang slide]. Its most famous practitioner was doubtless Crazy
Zhang, another artist who needed the lubrication of wine to free his genius. With
the Cursive style, there’s much more continuity of strokes, as well as greater
variation in size, in ink thickness and color. To maintain the energy flow in
writing, the artist may write a number of characters before stopping to recharge the
brush. [slide] Thus he is apt to begin with his brush heavily loaded with ink, and
the first characters will be heavy and dark. Of course the succeeding characters
will grow lighter and thinner as the brush dries up. This process of writing
introduces yet another kind of rhythm between heavy and light, wet and dry. Since
heavy dark characters look closer to the viewer, a three-dimensional space is
created.
--Surprisingly, the Cursive Style is very nearly as old as the Regular and Running
styles. All three styles have co-existed for nearly 2000 years. Crazy Zhang lived
during the Tang Dynasty, China’s “Golden Age.” Professional calligraphers
especially love the Cursive Style, as it gives them maximum freedom.
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--Now to conclude our investigation of Chinese calligraphy, we should stand back
and briefly consider the art of composition. A typical piece of calligraphy will have
three elements, all important: the main text; the inscriptions; and the seal or seals.
[Ray Cheng slide] It is not unusual to see a single character as the main text
[Dragon scroll]; here is the character “long”, which means “dragon”—a symbol of
transformation and auspiciousness. More common would be a proverb, such as
this: [Shi Jing Lan Xiang slide]. Equally common are poems or other longer
texts. Here is a Buddhist sutra: [slide]. How do the inscriptions function?
Typically they offer explanatory texts, often simply the name of the artist, the
season of the year the work was done, and a location. If the calligraphy is to be
given as a gift, the name of the recipient may be included. In the proverb I showed
you a moment ago, the inscription provides an interpretation of the main text, the
four characters. This calligraphy was evidently done for Westerners, since no
Chinese would need the interpretation. The seals, though small, are vivid, since
they are invariably done in red ink, forming a nice contrast with the black and
white. The name seal of the artist, usually a small red square, is placed next to his
written name. [slide of two seals] If he uses two seals, one should be a whitecharacter seal, called intaglio, and the other a seal in red relief, [relief seal, then
intaglio seal]. Some famous pieces of calligraphy have seen many owners, as the
number of seals makes clear [slide].
--Calligraphy has been of some importance in the West, but much less so than in
China. This is partly true because of calligraphy’s close association with painting
in China. To pursue this association would require too much of our time, so I’ll
close this lecture on the Chinese language simply by showing you a couple of
examples of the painting/calligraphy relationship. The first example is by the early
Qing Dynasty poet and painter Shi2 Tao1, who here combines the two arts [slide].
And here is a good example of the bland in Chinese painting. It is by the 14 th
century painter Ni Zan. Look at the exquisite calligraphy [Ni Zan slide]. In
traditional China the calligraphy was esteemed even higher than the other parts of a
painting. Contemporary Chinese painting, especially avant-garde work, seems
largely to have dispensed with calligraphy. [Bloodline slide] Paintings like this are
selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars at Western and Hong Kong auction
houses. This grim piece might be contrasted with a different kind of satirical
painting by Yue Minjun [slide].
--Do you have questions?
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THEN SIMPLIFIED/COMPLEX CHARACTERS