Tidbits From the World

One of the first actions that the Soviet government took, after the Bolshevik Revolution, was to reform the Russian language by removing 4 letters from its alphabet. This reform was aimed at making the language simpler, hence making it more accessible to the masses and in the meanwhile, breaking up from the bourgeois Tsarist Russia. In 1922, after the civil war in Russia, at the time of the USSR’s foundation, Russia was unified and the Communist Party controlled its entirety. Therefore all Russians started using the new spelling. The only resistance came from the former members of Tsarist Russia who had emigrated to foreign countries and did not represent any political power anymore, therefore the four removed letters were forgotten by almost everybody and fell in disuse.

However, after the collapse of the USSR, the letters made a comeback on occasional instances, for example in marketing. Here we have an advertisement for a hotel in St-Petersburg. The letter “yat” that was abandoned in 1918 is used here to give the hotel an ancient effect. This letter (the second one in the second red word; the letter located after “B” and before “H”) was replaced in modern orthography by “и” or “е” according to the pronunciation. The red words should read, according to today’s orthography, as: Старая ВЕНА.

Mongolia, before becoming a sovereign State had been a long time a Chinese province. Yet, when the last Chinese dynasty was overthrown by the Revolution in 1911, Mongolia declared its independence and, with help from the Soviet Union, they got international recognition. Thus, Russia later maintained a significant influence over Mongolia and when the Mongolian decided to reform their orthography, they pretty much went through a process of “Russification”, that is the introduction of a modified Cyrillic alphabet. On this Mongolian train (part of the Trans-Siberian railway), on the left you can see a word written in traditional Mongolian script, and on the right you can see probably its transliteration into the Cyrillic alphabet, the word “Restaurant”.

Someone wrote on this guestbook in Traditional Mongolian Script. I do not know how much this script is still used in Mongolia or even understood there, however today the official script for writing the Mongolian language is the Cyrillic alphabet. There also seems to be a tendency for teenagers and young adults to switch to the Latin alphabet, especially when using the Internet in chat rooms.

This leads me to the Chinese case. China also has had their share of reforms. Their first reform, in 1911, transformed the whole written language by switching from Classical Chinese (the equivalent of Latin in Europe), unintelligible to most Chinese, to Vernacular Chinese (that is, the Chinese spoken language), understood by all. By analogy, instead of writing “Ave Caesar”, after the reform one would write “Hello Caesar”  instead. This change enabled a lot of Chinese to read (if they were even familiar with Chinese characters).

The Chinese intellectuals at that time considered the thousands of Chinese characters as obstacles to the evolution of China and many of them spoke out in favor of the complete abolition of all the Characters and their substitution by an alphabetic system similar to the Korean or Japanese systems or even by adopting the Latin alphabet (as the Turks did in 1928). An article from the New York Times from December 12 1912, that is 14 months after the last Chinese Emperor’s deposition and 12 months after the proclamation of the Republic of China, tells that a Chinese scholar from Hong Kong had invented an alphabet composed of 44 letters that were to be used to replace the 40.000 characters. This project of replacing 40.000 characters by just 44 letters appealed to the ruling party at the time, the Kuomintang. Using a 44-letter alphabet would be easier to teach to children, which would drastically reduce illiteracy. But a succession of wars in China, civil wars, World War II, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the debacle of the Kuomintang at the hands of the Communists shelved this project of alphabetization of the Chinese language, while postponing the projects for its simplification.

In 1949, Mao’s Communist Party defeated the Kuomintang which took shelter in Taiwan. China then became a stable country, the specter of civil war had vanished, while the Communist Party were starting to find a solution to reduce illiteracy. The first step that they took was to simplify the Chinese Characters. ie The number of strokes needed to write a given Character would be reduced. Here are some examples:

Here is the Traditional Character for “vehicle”. It had been written in this shape for more than 2000 years. It is made up of 7 strokes.

Here is its simplified form, adopted in 1956. It is made up of 4 strokes an economy of 3 strokes.

Here is one of the most complex words in Traditional Chinese (which is also used in Japanese). The first character is made up of 15 strokes, while the second is made up of 29 strokes. In total, there are 44 strokes.

And here is the simplified form of the same word. The first character is made up of 7 strokes, while the second one is made up of 9 strokes for a total of 16 strokes, thus an economy of 28 strokes. So far so good, some awfully complex characters were simplified to more handwriting-friendly ones, while retaining some aesthetics.

The red character on the left here means “heart”. The blue one means “to receive”.

This third character is made up of a combination of the two colored ones.  A combination of the verb “to receive” and the noun “heart”. Try to guess the meaning… got it! Love! “To receive one’s heart”. This traditional character is made up of 13 strokes.

Here is the character that means “friend”.

And this character, “love” simplified in 1956, is made up of a combination of the character for “friend”, under a roof. Perhaps the meaning is “before falling in love, you must be friends first”? Whatever the meaning, this character is far less poetic than its traditional form. Some opponents to the simplification of the characters argue that : “Love without a heart, what is it? The Communists have no heart!”. This character is made up of 10 strokes, that is an economy of 3 strokes.

The Chinese Communist Party did not have the same chance that the Soviet Party had in Russia: the chance to exercise sovereignty over a completely unified nation. China was, indeed, divided in many parts: Hong Kong was a British colony, Macau was a Portuguese colony and Taiwan was under the control of the Kuomintang. These three territories to this day still haven’t introduced the simplified characters to their written language yet.

Originally, the simplification of the characters was meant to only be a transitional state before the complete Romanization of Chinese. One of Mao Zedong’s advisers told the chairman, who was looking for a solution to his fight against illiteracy, about the Vietnamese case. He mentioned that the French who had been controlling Vietnam for some time had ditched the Vietnamese characters (derived from the Chinese characters) to replace them by alphabetical letters. The result was described by the adviser as a complete success at reducing illiteracy. Mao listened to this advice and decided to follow this path. In 1958, Pinyin (a phonetic transcription using the Latin alphabet) was invented. A CIA report declassified in 1993 studied the Romanization of Chinese. They wrote in their introduction:

If the Communists have their way in China, the age-old characters of the Chinese language will finally join the Egyptian and Mayan hieroglyphics and the more recently buried Vietnamese ideographs in oblivion. Like Kemal Ataturk’s a few decades ago, the Communists’ effort to remold the nation includes a drive for drastic changes in a language ill suited to science and technology, to education of the masses, to the communications of a directed economy, to their international purposes. Much of the heritage that was dear to Old China, obnoxious to the new, will also be buried with the old language: future generations of school children taught from latinized textbooks, will not be able to read the undesirable ancient classics. The gentility of the cursive characters will be replaced by the classlessness of proletarian typefaces.

According to this document, a complete plan was elaborated to engage in the complete latinization of the Chinese language. First, in 1958, Pinyin would be taught in primary schools, High Schools and Universities, and then, gradually, publications such as newspapers and books, would be written exclusively in Pinyin. The small town of Wanrong Xian （万荣县） in Shanxi Province （山西） was chosen as an experimental farm to evaluate Pinyin. The Romanization of Chinese was under way. It was all a matter of time for the characters to completely disappear… until Mao reportedly said “That’s too foreign!” and stopped the process. Therefore pinyin was never adopted as the sole script for writing Chinese, but only used as a complement to the study of the characters, to help children learn the pronunciation.

This is the word “restaurant” in Traditional Characters. The first character is made up of 16 strokes, while the second one is made up of 25 strokes, a total of 41 strokes.

The same word, written after 1956 in simplified characters. Total of 20 strokes, an economy of 21 strokes. So far so good, the Chinese language was now simplified and in the meantime, illiteracy was also reduced… but then came the Cultural Revolution in the years 1966-1976. To make this long story of successive catastrophes short: “Old China” was going to be destroyed to give way to the “New China”, free from all ideological pollution originating from the former political orders (capitalism and feodalism). Most traditional characters can be broken down into subunits each having a meaning, as we saw with the character for “love” (to receive one’s heart). Mao and his team thought that these subunits carried non-Marxist-Leninist ideas and that they represented a danger to communism in China. Therefore, they had to be eliminated. A second wave of simplification of the characters was prepared during the Cultural Revolution and put forth on December 20 1977, one year after Mao’s death.

This is the same word, “restaurant”, simplified for a second time. Total of 9 strokes, an economy of 32 strokes from the traditional characters and 11 strokes from the simplified characters of 1956. These characters from the second wave become almost as simple as letters, which led the language to an inevitable consequence: the characters lost of their precision. One oversimplified characters could bear the meanings of two traditional characters, which were already bearing many meanings themselves. The second wave of simplification was badly welcomed and met with strong opposition.

Here, I will briefly digress: this is how the word “restaurant” would look  like if pinyin had been adopted as the sole writing system in China. Simple, isn’t?

Here is another very common example: this word means “to park (a car)”. 18 strokes.

First simplification (1956). 15 strokes (an economy of 3 strokes).

Second simplification (1977). 8 strokes (an economy of 10 strokes in comparison to the traditional characters or 7 strokes compared to the simplified ones). Then, something very rare in China happened: after years of constant opposition from everywhere in the society, from within the Party as well as from some scholars, the government finally backed off and ditched the oversimplified characters on June 24 1986. The second wave of simplification had been officially used in China for only 9 years. Today, the characters that are in use in the People’s Republic of China are the simplified characters from the first wave (1956).

To sum up, there have been four writing systems in use in China in the last 60 years (Traditional, Simplified, Pinyin and Simplified (2nd wave)). Nowadays, there are only two official systems in China: the simplified characters from 1956 and pinyin, although all four systems are concomitantly being used by the Chinese people, most of the time the characters that one uses reflect the age of the writer.

Here, you can recognize two of the three red characters on top: the second one and the third one: “vehicle” and “ting” (in the word “restaurant”). Both characters are used in their traditional form in this bus terminal in Sichuan province. Maybe was it written this way for aesthetics or maybe because the terminal is older than 60 years… The message below, in white, is written in simplified Chinese.

The official simplified characters. Here you can recognize the word “to park a car” (停车).

And finally, this message “No Parking” written in oversimplified Chinese. Probably written by someone who got his education between 1977 and 1986.

And here is pinyin. “Xin da jing pin”… “Saijun”.

Click here to download the New York Times Article from 1912.

Click here to download the CIA report on pinyin.

Imagine working nearly 16 hours a day, without earning enough money to rent an apartment.

The average monthly salary of a streetside fruits vendor: about 1000 yuans.

The average monthly rent in that area of the city: about 2000 yuans.

The summer camp that I attended last July, for some legal reasons, was not really a “summer camp” (even though it resembled a camp), but rather a “Summer School”. As Mister Lee, the organizer of the School, put it, this was a “Spiritual School”. A school in which Mr Lee, throughout a week-long program, tried to teach his young students some notions that are completely foreign to the current normal curricula for primary school and high school in the People’s Republic of China: critical thinking and self-fulfillment through civic education.

The first notion was probably the most complex and the one requiring most diplomacy from Mr Lee and his assistants to lecture about: development of critical thinking. In a country where all media are State-owned, it is easy to accept all the facts that are brought forward without using readily available sources on the Internet. Some very controversial taboos were addressed in the summer school. Some students were shocked to hear for the first time of their lives the questioning of the very foundations of their own education. For instance, one of the volunteers who came from Beijing, delivered a speech that questioned the One China Policy. This policy aims at preserving China’s territorial integrity as it was before the fall of the last dynasty in 1911 – however without Mongolia and some other lost territories. That is all the provinces included to what is called “China Proper” (Beijing, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Hunan, …), as well as provinces mostly populated by ethic minorities (Tibet, Xinjiang), Taiwan and the sorrounding Islands currently under the jurisdiction of the Republic Of China, the South China sea and some borders that are yet to be internationally recognised. His point was that China is a very huge and complex country and it would not be that bad if one of its provinces – if their respective populations were to agree – would separate from China and form their own independent country. Boom. This very statement had the effect of a bomb on the students. One of them, startled by what she had just heard said to Ying “听得不舒服” (this makes me uncomfortable). Of course, the purpose of this speech was not to make regional separatists out of these young students. There was no separatist in the room. The idea was to open the door to critical thinking. To teach the students how to be able to accept the possibility of an idea that goes against the biggest taboo currently in China, or at least, to make sure that these children would hear a different viewpoint for the first time in their lives, and then start building a free mind.

The second notion, individualism, was much less controversial at the political level, than the first notion, but nevertheless was still somewhat unsettling for family relationships. In China, there is a concept that makes children the “private properties” of their parents. Having a child is an investment for the future. A child must therefore have a successful career in order to get a high salary and help their parents when they retire. The first step to success is education. You have to study, everyday, from 8 a.m to 11p.m, you must go to school in the summer, in July and August, and then take English classes when time permits. But why in the world should a student work that hard at school? Or, the question as asked by Mr Lee: “WHO are you doing all this for? WHO do you work for? WHO do you study for?” To this question, many students answered that they wanted their parents to be proud of them. This is when Mr Lee asked them “What are YOUR dreams?”.

So the students, one by one, presented to the class their dreams.  Some of them dreamed of working in a big city and becoming rich, while some others dreamed of staying in the countryside and grow vegetables.

Some other students chose to talk about their past, their moving past, recalling a lost parent, the despair of life in poverty, while others perhaps leading a happier life chose to talk about their aspirations.

The first day of the program, the wake-up time was set to 6 a.m (and the day ended at 11 p.m!) Early in the morning, we climbed one of the hills around the town where the school was located. The course was steep, wet and muddy.

Once on the summit, the students would sing and read poems in an ambiance that resembled very much to Evangelist Christian summer camps in the USA where biblical verses are read in the nature. But in this case, there was nothing religious.

The second day, at the same time, we climbed a second hill. The soil was less muddy and the course less steep, so coming down was easier.

In passing, we met various farmers who climb and go down the hill every day without feeling tired!

Old but fit.

But 6 a.m really was too early to get up. The students and the volunteers were exhausted. A student complained about it, and then Mr Lee gave a demonstration of democracy to the students (did he plan it all?) So a proposition was put forward to modify the schedule by removing the early morning hill-climbing, moving the wake-up time one hour later and have the children read poems in the school playground instead of at the summit of a hill. After a heated debate, the vote was carried out and the result was very close: 20 yea: 19 nay for the modification of the schedule! Therefore, from that day on, there was no more hill climbing. By chance, the students were present in an odd number. Had the result of the vote come out as a tie, Mr Lee would have had to use his power of vote to break the tie, which might have been viewed by the children as an authoritarian move, and might have confused the students in their idea of a “perfect” democracy.

In all, there were 6 part-time volunteers, available for only one week; one full-time volunteer; Mr Lee and his wife. Each volunteer brought something different to the school. Ying and I brought the “foreign world”, two students from Guangdong (also known as “Canton”) taught singing, a philosopher from Beijing (whose name means “love for philosophy (爱哲)”) taught some fundamentals of democracy and philosophy, a teacher also from Canton, from an ethnic minority, showed  the students images from her native village. The full-time volunteer, a poet, helped Mr Lee in his enterprise and added his point of view to tackle some problems. On this picture, both Cantonese students are teaching how to use one’s voice to sing. The guys are separated from the girls.

Ying described her experience abroad in the USA.

“Westerners vs Chinese”

Westerner’s world view vs Chinese’s. The relationships between an individual and five different elements: (other people, family, objects, nature and God). In Westerners, according to Mr Lee’s assessment, the most important relationship, the one that encompasses everything, is between an individual and God, while in the Chinese, this relationship doesn’t exist, as shown in the diagrams (the dotted circle in the left diagram represents this relationship in Westerners). According to Mr Lee, what is lacking most in the Chinese, is spirituality, as practiced in the West. Mr Lee is an Evangelist Christian.

As the program was advancing, the presentation progressively grew more religious. Some movies were presented, many of them recounting the lives of great historical personalities (which also appeared to be Christians). Among them: Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King and Gandhi.

There was also a non-religious movie that was presented: the Wizard of Oz. At the last day of the camp, there would be a reenactment of some scenes from the movie made by the students. There was three teams of actors, each team would play the same scenes. The best actors in each team would be declared as the winners.

Here are some photos of the play.

The best actors, chosen by a secret vote.

At the end of the camp, a guestbook was put at the disposal of the students so that they could write down their thoughts. They could write about anything: their aspirations, their opinion on the camp, etc.

The camp was interrupted two times to receive book donations made by benefactors. The books that Ying donated arrived exactly on the last day!

The organization which organized the camp is above all an NGO whose objective is to build libraries in rural China. To date, they already have built 4 libraries in 3 Chinese provinces. This organization was founded by some intellectuals from Beijing. Mr Lee told me that the building of a library costs approximately 40000元 (USD 5800)  in equipment (computers, projector, …), in furniture and in other expenses (for example: notebooks). Then, you add 10000 to 20000元 (USD 1500 to 3000$)  annually on top of it for maintenance. This NGO is represented by 5 intellectuals, each of them unique in their approach, but all sharing one common view: the importance of civic education in China. This is not an organization with a political purpose, nor is it religious. If you would like to help this organization in any way, you can directly contact Mr Lee at the following address: liyingqiang@gmail.com