Taiwan Today

China is an ancient country. It has an uninterrupted cultural heritage of more than 5,000 years. It has one-fourth of the world's population. How this cultural heritage has been maintained in such a huge community for so long a time is an interesting story. To understand Chinese culture, which is the world's oldest, we first must trace the origin of Chinese characters, for these are the medium for recording thought. In doing so, we shall meet with difficulties, for there are no authentic records of the very early stages of writing. However, there must have been some primitive aids to memory before the invention of picture-characters, which we call signs or symbols.

The first stage as recorded in Chinese history was that of knotted strings or cords ( 結繩 ) before the time of Emperor Fu Hsi ( 伏羲 ) in the 28th century B.C. These knotted cords were used to chronicle events which had already taken place and to forecast those which were still to come. The larger the knot, the more important the event.

The second stage was the invention of Pa-kua ( 八卦 ) or the eight trigrams by Fu Hsi. In propounding these, he tried to bring the essential phenomena of heaven and the outstanding facts of earth into a simple system of notation. Using the two signs - ( 陽 ) and -- ( 陰 ), corresponding to the positive and negative principles of the universe, Fu Hsi evolved eight combinations, each of which is represented in the following:

This list is instructive in showing what seemed of greatest importance to the human mind at that early stage of civilization. The system is one of grouping all observed objects and phenomena possessing some quality in common under the eight primary symbols. For instance (  ) and (  ) might represent not only heaven and earth but also father and mother, man and woman, strength and weakness, hardness and softness. The way of life then was simple. The eight primary symbols denoted those things' that· human beings could not cope with. Lives and property were at the mercy of these forces. But as the "way of life became more complex, these symbols were not sufficient.

Beginnings of picture writing are traditionally ascribed to the time of Ts'ang Chieh ( 蒼頡 ). He was the official recorder of the Yellow Emperor ( 黃帝 28th-26th century B.C.). He is said to have devised a notched stick, called Hsu-chih 書 栔 ), used as a sort of deed. The parties to a transaction divided the stick, which bore a symbol of some kind. Ts'ang Chieh observed the claw marks of birds and footprints of animals, the shadows cast by trees, and so on, and engraved these on the sticks. Such symbols became elementary characters.

These picture-characters were related to facts of daily life — fighting, hunting, food, clothes, rain, water, shelter, boats, sun, moon, etc.

Earliest Chinese records date to the 18th century B.C. in the Shang-Yin ( 商殷 ) dynasty. Characters were engraved on tortoise shells and animal bones. This is called shell-bone writing ( 甲骨文 ). Picture characters also are found on bronzes of the same dynasty and the latter part of the Chou ( 周 12th century B.C.) dynasty.

Picture-characters simplified pictures of things, and some are still found in the modern Chinese characters — such as 日 for "sun", 月 for "moon", 山 for "mountain", 牛 for "cow" or "ox", and 魚 for "fish".

The time between invention of the notched stick and the engravings on tortoise shells and animal bones was nearly 1,000 years. Another thousand years elapsed before an imperial recorder named Chou ( 周 ) originated a system of characters called Chou Wen ( 籀 文 ) or Ku Wen ( 古文 )usually engraved on bronze, about 800 .B.C. Later these character came to be known as Ta Chuan ( 大篆 ) or the Great Seal.

A great disaster befell the Chinese written language in 213 B.C., when the First Emperor of Chin dynasty ordered the destruction of every book. At the same time, however, his premier, Li Szu ( 李斯 ) , drew up an official index of characters and fixed the written form, which was known as Hsiao Chuan ( 小篆 ) or the Small Seal, containing more than 3,000 characters. He combined the primitive picture-characters with phonetic symbols. This opened the way for scholars to add as many characters as were needed. By 200 A.D., the number of characters exceeded 10,000. The number now has reached about 50,000, although the knowledge of about 4,000 is sufficient for reading ordinary materials.

Six Categories

As the number of characters grew, their appearance changed from time to time, such as Li Shu ( 隸書 ) or "square plain", Kai Shu ( 揩書 ) or "regular", Hsing Shu ( 行書 ) or "running", and Ts'ao Shu ( 草書 ) or "grass". Some of the new forms were adopted to expedite writing, others for aesthetic reasons, and still others to take advantage of improved writing materials.

In 86 B.C. in the Han dynasty ( 漢 ), the first standard work on Chinese etymology, the Shou Wen Chieh Tsu ( 說文解字 ) was written by Hsu Shen ( 許慎 ). It was not printed until about 120 A.D. This book has the first classification of Chinese characters by radicals, the modern form of the picture symbols. Hsu Shen classified the ancient characters in six categories, showing how they were constructed and how new ones could be formed. Wen ( 文 ) means simple characters. Tsu ( 字 ) means compound characters. Together they mean the written language ( 文字 ).

Hsu Shen's six categories of characters are as follows:

1. Hsiang-hsing ( 象形 ): Formed as a picture of real objects. Examples:日 (sun), 月 (moon).

2. Hui-i ( 會 意 ): Conceptional-symbolic characters formed by combining two or more characters, each with a meaning of its own, to stand for an entirely new meaning. Examples: 信 (trustworthy) is the combination of 人 (man) and 言 (word). It means "man's word" should be "trustworthy" — a new meaning. 武 (military) is the combination of 止 (stop) and 戈 (lance). It means: "To stop using the lance is the aim of the military"-a new meaning.

3. Chia-chieh ( 假借 ): Phonetic-symbolic characters formed by borrowing existing characters of the same sound to represent something. Examples: 令 (to order), borrowed to represent a mayor, for he gives orders;長 (tall), borrowed to represent a governor, for he is a leader of others.

4. Chih-shih ( 指書 ) Formed by combining imitative symbols and conceptional symbols. Meanings of such characters may be easily grasped by examining their shapes. Examples include 上 (up) and 下 (down).

5. Hsing-sheng ( 形聲 ): Formed by combining the nearest phonetic symbols and pictures of objects. Examples: Both 江 chiang (river) and 河 ho (river) have the water radical 氵 at the left. 工 on the right side of the first character indicates the sound of water flowing in a narrow river; 可 of the second character indicates the sound of water flowing, but in a wider river.

6. Chuan-chu ( 轉注 ): Formed from other characters but given new meanings because of phonetic changes. They combine conceptional and phonetic symbols and may be called "diversified characters".

Endless Combinations

Some of these explanations are based on the Book of Etymology by Liu Tai-pei ( 劉大白 ), who pointed out that categories 4, 5, and 6 are compounds of categories 1, 2, and 3. The following diagram shows the relationships:

Although a Chuan-chu character is formed by combining a conceptional symbol and a phonetic symbol, it has a meaning of its own. This is true of any character that is formed from various combinations. The new character can serve the purpose of a conceptional symbol of advanced stage, capable of combining further with a phonetic symbol to form still another new character that also can be classified in the Chuan-chu category.

From the foregoing we know that Chinese characters, unlike the written form of other languages, have made use of symbols other than those of phonetic value. Most characters include imitative and conceptional symbols. In other words, Chinese characters are pictures as well as sounds. Any group of them can be compared with an exhibition of small pictures.

Chinese characters are picturesque. Other languages are composed of the limited number of letters of an alphabet made of circles, lines, and dots, and looking much alike. Chinese characters thus make up the most beautiful way of writing in the world. This is why the word "calligraphy" is seldom used to describe any but Chinese handwriting. It is the only written language that can be hung on the wall in the form of a scroll and an object of art, and every Chinese knows how to enjoy it.

Chinese characters also are classified scientifically. For instance, all birds fall in the ( 鳥 ) group. All metals are in the (金 ) group. Anything related to the eye falls in the ( 目 ) group, anything made of bamboo in the ( 竹 ) group, and so on. Such words as ( 銀 銅 鉛 錫 ) and ( 鉛 ) are metals, belonging to the ( 金 ) group. The pronunciation of each is determined by the right-hand element. This is quite different from, say, English, in which the words "silver", "copper", "aluminum", "tin", and "lead" are hardly classifiable at sight. There is no limit to the number of characters that can be added to the 214 groups found in a dictionary. Chinese characters have gone through many revisions and have not simply been inherited from primitive times. The methods invented by Li Sze and later by Hsu Shen have made the construction of the characters scientific.

Simple and Short

Characters are monosyllabic, so it is easy to pronounce as well as remember them. They are simple and short. One page of an English essay translated into Chinese may take only half a page. The grammar offers no problems of gender, number, accent, case, voice, mood, tense or degree of comparison. Nor are there prefixes and suffixes. Yet there is no confusion. Simplicity is what everyone looks for in a scientific age, and China was ready for it long ago.

As mentioned in the Confucian Analects, the ancient Chinese knew that the unity of a great nation requires the standardization of the written language. Thus they did not select phonetic symbols alone in forming the Chinese characters. People living on the opposite sides of a mountain may have different spoken languages. If China had a phonetic language, it would have been divided into numerous nations, just as the Europe of today. For this reason, we are against the Romanization of our language. Formerly, a Shanghainese might not understand what a Cantonese said. But now every child has to learn Mandarin and the phonetic signs at school, and people from all part of the country can understand each other.

China's language is artistic, scientific, and uncomplicated. It has served as a great uniting force. It may be hard to find another language that has contributed as much. But there is nothing perfect in the world. Chinese does have some disadvantages. For example:

— Lack of an alphabet makes it impossible for one to read characters he does not know.

— The necessity for providing thousands of types for printing is inconvenient.

— Portable typewriters are impractical because of the number of keys required.

— Index systems are difficult to devise.

With reference to the first point, I venture to say that lack of an alphabet is not too serious. As a matter of fact, learners have to remember each word whether it is formed by letters or characters. In America today adults learn Chinese quickly, so the absence of an alphabet should not handicap children in learning to read. The experience we have had with both adults and children shows it is easy to devise efficient procedures for teaching Chinese. Moreover, if one learns to pronounce 同 (same) as tung, he can guess that these other characters arc pronounced alike: 桐 (aleurites), 銅 (copper), 筒 (pipe), and 痌 (painful).

As for the second weakness, I should like to point out that we need to utilize modem methods of printing and copying to solve the problem. In 1935, I invented a shelf for 4,000 types, each of which could slide down to the typesetter. This system was entirely different from placing the types in boxes. With the shelf one could sit down and set type. It saved time and space, and was used successfully at the Jen-teh Printing Company in Nanking. But I did not have a chance to move the equipment when the Sino-Japanese War broke out, and it was destroyed.

Light Typewriter

On the third point, we may yet make a Chinese typewriter light enough to be portable. In my Chungking days, I made three models of a portable Chinese typewriter with the help of a technician named Yao Yuan-yung. During a Japanese air raid, a bomb made a direct hit on my workshop and Yao was killed. I lost the courage to go on with the work. I hope some day I shall find some one to help me continue efforts to perfect such a machine.

As for the fourth weakness, in 1928 I invented the "five-stroke index system" based on the elementary structure of the characters. It was adopted by many government and party organizations in Nanking for use in filing. I wrote a book and a dictionary published by the Chung Hwa Book Company. By using my system, the Chinese characters can be arranged in the order of 5 strokes and their multiplied index of 25 or 125 and so on, a scheme similar to the arrangement of letters in the English alphabet. With the aid of computers, the system may be put to use in a large number of ways.

China should feel proud of its wonderful language. The Chinese owe it to themselves to do their best to make it truly the best language in the world.

Editor's Note: Dr. Chen Li-fu, a former Chinese education minister and vice president of the Legislative Yuan, now resides in Jackson, New Jersey. This article contains the essence of a lecture given by Dr. Chen at the University of Maryland's Sino-American forum this spring.