Taiwan Today

A writing system from ancient is receiving more and more attention in and beyond.

The first day of Taipei was as cold as any other day in the winter, but the atmosphere was vibrant at Huashan Culture Park in Taipei, where nearly 13,000 people gathered to practice the art of calligraphy simultaneously at around 1:30 that afternoon. President Ma Ying-jeou was there, too, and wrote the Chinese characters for han and an--meaning "Chinese" and "peace" respectively--with ink and brush on two large square pieces of red paper. The scale of the simultaneous writing of traditional Chinese characters was so big that the organizer, the Department of Cultural Affairs of the Taipei City Government, is applying to list it as a Guinness World Record.

Despite 's shared cultural legacy with populous mainland , the organizers are not worried about the record being broken any time soon. "It would be kind of challenging to break this record because, unlike mainland Chinese, we all use traditional Chinese characters in our daily life," says Lee Yong-ping, commissioner of the department.

The wielding of writing brushes on New Year's Day is one of the events during the annual Chinese Character Festival, which first took place at the end of 2004 when Ma was mayor of . This year's festival, which lasted from November 25, 2008 to January 11, 2009, was welcomed by supporters of traditional Chinese characters as the form faces a growing threat from the simplified characters used in mainland .

The challenges to the traditional form of writing go back more than 100 years, however. "Actually traditional Chinese writing was questioned and challenged after the Opium War around 1840, when the Chinese people faced grave defeat by the West and anti-tradition sentiment started to develop," says Tsai Ying-chun, a professor of Chinese Language and Literature at National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu.

At that time, traditions began to be looked on as "defective," a hurdle to 's development, with some academics calling for the abolition of traditional characters in the declining years of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). Although those early attempts were in vain, the threat rematerialized when the communists announced the first round of simplified characters in 1956, seven years after claiming rule over mainland . The anti-tradition sentiment culminated later during the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 and played a role in what the communists considered linguistic reform, although the main intention of this writing system revolution was to reduce illiteracy among mainland Chinese by making the characters easier to write and recognize.

, on the other hand, has been free from communist rule and therefore the invasion of simplified Chinese. Today, there are more than 30 million users of traditional Chinese characters--or standard characters from the viewpoint of the form's promoters--around the world, mostly in and , which was handed over to the mainland Chinese government in 1997.

Chinese characters are also used in other parts of , varying in form and currency. Ethnic Chinese in and , who account for a large portion of the populations of those countries, use simplified characters, although slightly different from those used in mainland . Chinese characters are called hanja and kanji respectively in the and , with the latter still playing a significant role in the Japanese writing system. The Chinese script once dominated in , but it was later completely abolished. "The further back you go in these Asian cultures, the closer link they have with Chinese characters," says Hsu Hsueh-jen, professor of Chinese language and literature at National Hualien University of Education.

Simplified Education

That said there are always fresh threats to traditional Chinese characters. For a long time most learners of the Chinese language around the world were taught traditional characters. The situation has changed as mainland has risen, along with the writing system it has adopted. Moreover, in 2004 the mainland government kicked off its effort to actively promote the Chinese language the world over by establishing the first Confucius Institute in . To date, about 250 such institutions are operating worldwide.

Meanwhile, some of the challenges to the use of traditional Chinese characters have come from within . With the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party coming to power in 2000, Tsai Ying-chun says some advocates of the party's ideology have called for severing the island's cultural links with mainland by, for example, replacing Chinese characters altogether with a phonetic written system. In addition, given the sophistication and prevalence of computer technology, some fear that members of the younger generations in are in danger of losing their skills in writing traditional characters by hand. "They're less particular about and less familiar with the characters than older generations," Tsai says.

Although traditional Chinese characters are still widely used in , remaining the tool of written communication throughout society, it is no wonder that supporters still feel the need to take action. "Unlike most of the writing systems in the world based on a phonetic script, Chinese characters are ideographs, themselves interesting images representing ideas or things," says lyricist Vincent Fang. Fang is known for his graceful lyrics reminiscent of Chinese poetry sung by pop superstar Jay Chou. "The more I research the languages in the world, the more I love Chinese characters," Fang says. "You see people hanging a set of Chinese characters on the wall for decoration, but this wouldn't happen, say, with the Norwegian alphabet."

Living History

"Chinese characters haven't changed over a long period of time. A senior high school student can read most of the text inscribed on a 2,000-year-old artifact. That's amazing," Fang continues, expressing his admiration of the writing system. Of course, he is referring to traditional characters, a living linguistic fossil linking ancient and the modern world. "The simplified version has less aesthetic value. A traditional character looks better because of the symmetry and balance in its organic structure," he says.

While some find simplified characters unsatisfactory aesthetically, others say they can also be confusing semantically. To be fair, the mainland's communist regime did not carry out the simplification policy completely at random, according to Hsu Hsueh-jen. For example, some simplified characters in regular script were made to look like the cursive-script version of the original traditional characters. Other simplified characters had already appeared in ancient texts. In some cases, however, the simplification can seem idiosyncratic, sometimes causing two different traditional characters to share the same simplified form. As a result, "you wouldn't know what the simplified character means without referring to the context," the scholar says.

All this explains the importance of promoting traditional Chinese characters and the encouragement of the art of calligraphy is certainly a good way to present the beauty of this cultural legacy. "You have to focus your mind when you practice calligraphy so that you can better appreciate the beauty of the characters. And the time you spend writing them, stroke by stroke, creates a sense of distance, hence a sense of beauty," Tsai Ying-chun says.

Until 2003, it was compulsory for all grade school pupils in to practice calligraphy, but today schools are enjoying more autonomy and can decide for themselves whether or not they should open such a course. In view of this, the festival's attempt to revive the art form is especially meaningful. "We talk about boosting aesthetic education to enhance 's creativity, and calligraphy is just exactly that," Tsai adds.

Written Culture

To raise the public's awareness of traditional characters as a valuable asset, the festival also tries to develop links with members of the cultural and creative industries that the government has been especially promoting for the past seven years. Designers from different sectors were invited to talk about their experience using traditional Chinese characters in their designs, such as fashion designer Goji Lin.

"The Japanese people have successfully combined the art of calligraphy with products for a long time such as, for example, printing it on wrapping paper," Lin says. "But I think we [ethnic Chinese] are better positioned to present calligraphy on the market because it has its roots in . The problem is we haven't commercialized it well."

Having used Chinese cultural elements in his work for some time already, Lin designed more than 20 outfits especially for a fashion show at the festival. While some featured large Chinese characters in cursive script on the fabric, other designs showed ink paintings accompanied by a couple of lines of characters. "Traditionally Chinese paintings and characters are seen side by side," Lin explains.

On the other hand, except for several works intended to highlight the artistic concept behind the fashion collection at the festival, the designer veered away from the black characters on white paper of traditional calligraphy out of consideration of marketability. "Too many dresses in nothing but these two colors are reminiscent of clothing for funerals," he says, explaining the need to address pragmatic concerns when adapting an old tradition.

The festival, based at , aimed to promote traditional Chinese characters along with Chinese language in general. There was a xiang-sheng show, a traditional comic performance in which performers engage in fast-paced banter, this time based on wordplays related to Chinese characters. Vincent Fang and academics including Tsai Ying-chun and Hsu Hsueh-jen gave lectures on Chinese language and characters. There was also an online quiz on Chinese characters, with questions such as which of the liushu, or "six methods," a certain Chinese character was created from, and the correct form of certain characters that are often written wrongly. About 750 participants passed the test and were awarded a certificate from the Taipei City Government.

One could even join a guided tour to the three word worshiping "pavilions" in the area dedicated to Cangjie, the legendary figure who is credited with the invention of Chinese characters. An official in the court of Huangdi, or the Yellow Emperor, who has been dubbed the common ancestor of the Chinese people, Cangjie is still worshipped at a number of sites around as the inventor of Chinese writing. The Cangjie Input Method, one of the major systems by which Chinese characters can be entered into a computer, is named after this legendary figure.

World Treasure

The festival is expected to grow in influence as attempts to promote and preserve traditional Chinese characters have moved into a higher gear recently. One such effort is a bid to have the traditional form of writing included on the Oral and Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity list of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). That idea was first discussed in 2003, the year before the first Chinese Character Festival, within the Taipei City Government led by then Mayor Ma Ying-jeou. In fact, part of the aim of the festival is to add momentum to this broader cultural campaign.

's international status and exclusion from the UN, however, remain the largest barriers to achieving this goal. Nevertheless, Taipei City Government's Commissioner of Cultural Affairs Lee Yong-ping has confidence in the eventual recognition of traditional Chinese characters by UNESCO. "They're making a comeback in mainland China, at least among the private sector and in academic circles," she says.

National Tsing Hua University professor Tsai Ying-chun echoes Lee's point, saying that mainland China is experiencing a turnaround in attitudes toward cultural legacies, a favorable trend for protectors of traditional Chinese characters.

Lee says future festivals could be a good way to promote the UNESCO bid. "We're thinking about inviting UNESCO officials to the festival in the future. We also rely on Taiwan's government offices in Paris [where UNESCO is located] to seek opinions and find ways to promote traditional Chinese characters for the world heritage list," she says.

Perhaps the day of traditional Chinese characters being officially recognized and preserved by the UN is still remote, but the Taipei festival is a starting point on the long road to letting the whole world learn about and appreciate this precious cultural asset.

Write to Oscar Chung at oscar@mail.gio.gov.tw