JULIE OYANG
| BANZA
What a( bad) poem can teach you about the Chinese language?
-On modern language reforms and censorship 誓食十獅
JULIE OYANG
Most people don’ t realize that the Chinese writing system is the most significant reason why China is a continuous civilization for almost 5000 years.
Although this is a statement an educated Chinese would like to make; it’ s a lie with good though uneducated intention.
What has been continuous is not civilization – Chinese civilizations( plural) have been diverse enough to be successful on diversity ground alone – but rather it is a single writing system – hanzi 汉字:
| BANZA
Chinese characters – that has sustained for more than 2000 years, lasting from 3rd century BC until this very day. First Emperor of Qin, the founder of the Qin dynasty, introduced several reforms: currency, weights and measures were standardized, and a uniform system of writing Chinese characters was established. Ever since then, Qin’ s writing system had functioned as the culture’ s superglue that held and holds together the vastly different people speaking very different languages.( Qin emperor was also the initiator of the famed defense project known to us as the Great Wall.)
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