Characters in Crisis

　　Want to be a hero? Pick one of the followingtasks: A. rescue a maiden; B. win a battle; C. savethe world. If you can speak Chinese, there’s anotheroption: master writing all the Chinese characters. Butthe task might not be as easy as it sounds, even fornative speakers.

　　This summer, more than 100 people were challengedwith dictation tasks concerning commonChinese words and idioms through Hero of Hanzi(Chinese Characters), a talent show produced byHenan Satellite TV that has aired since July. Thecontestants were teenagers aged seven to 17, butthe sensation they spurred caused reverberationsthrough the adult world, too.

　　Twenty-Five-year-old magazine editor ZhangLinlin was one of the viewers. With a pencil in hand,Zhang tried to write down each character along withcontestants, but apparently she had no chance tobecome a hero. “With a language-focused job, I failedon over half the characters,” said Zhang. Surprisedby the embarrassing result, she said, “it’s weird to seeyourself being so bad at writing your own language.”

　　But Zhang was by no means alone. Accordingto a survey after the show, less than 50 percent ofChinese can correctly write “ jianxie (intermittence),”and over 70 percent of adults don’t have a clue aboutthe word “laihama (toad).”

　　The hit show boosted interest in Chinese handwritingskills, which have generally been deterioratingin the wake of the technology revolution. A mobilephone game was soon devised to cater to people’seagerness to test themselves. But for scholars studyingChinese language, the phenomenon indicatedsomething more serious than a game. Many perceivedthe phenomenon as a possible crisis forthe Chinese language.

　　Elusive characters

　　Due to a unique logographic writing system,Chinese is more susceptible to this type ofcrisis than most languages. Different froman alphabetic writing system, Chinesehas developed thousands of complexsigns, instead of a few dozen letters,to represent morphemes and words.

　　“Once you memorize the alphabet, youcan write Arabic instantly. But Chinese isdifferent,” said an Egyptian woman studyingin Beijing who preferred to be quoted with herChinese name, Wang Xiao.

　　In addition, modern Chinese has many homophones;thus the same spoken syllable may berepresented by many different characters, dependingon meaning. For both natives and foreign learners,memorizing all characters could be a life-longtask. After living in China for years, Wang can speakand lecture fluently in Chinese. But meanwhile, sheadmits to relying on the dictionary app in her phoneto clarify writing.

　　It is often said that knowledge of 2,000 words isenough to read an English newspaper, and 2,500characters will do the same in a Chinese context.

　　However, an educated English native speaker isunlikely to forget the spelling of those words, whilemost Chinese occasionally stumble on commonwords. A survey carried out by China YouthDaily shows that 98.9 percent of respondents haveencountered the embarrassment of “characteramnesia.”

　　Luckily, the elusive characters don’t bother peoplein the digital era. The pinyin system (a phoneticsystem) developed in the 1950s makes it possibleto input Chinese through an English keyboard, andmore conveniently, there’s no need to memorize thecomplex composition of the logographic characters.But many Chinese scholars believe the conveniencecauses a problem. Digitally inputting charactersspeeds up the deterioration of handwriting memory,due to lack of writing practice. The advent of portabledigital devices, like smart phones and ipads, undoubtedlyworsens the situation. The survey shows thatonly 38.9 percent of Chinese still handwrite everyday.

　　“Our life has already been exposed to shallowreading and fast food culture; we replace thepen with the keyboard. We are getting increasinglyfar away from character writing,” saidJiang Lansheng, Chairman of the LexicographicalSociety of China. “If we don’t curb the trend,we have every reason to worry about thefuture of Chinese handwriting. Maybe theironic story will come true that Chinesenatives cannot write in Chinese.”

　　On the other hand, some believe thephenomenon signals a deeper crisis, onethat centers on preserving the Chineseculture more than it does on improvingindividual handwriting skills.

　　“We cannot have digital devices take all the responsibility.

　　Shall we kick computers out of our lifejust because of our bad handwriting skills? To build asustainable future for Chinese characters, it’s crucialto have the entire people educated and culturedand stir consistent desire for that,” said Wang Ning,Professor at Beijing Normal University.

　　Heightened attention

　　The potential hanzi crisis again highlights theabsence of traditional Chinese culture in education.“Most students are not able to learn and practicecalligraphy at primary school,” said Xie Yong, whoteaches Chinese at Beijing Lu Xun High School.

　　“Parents and teachers are zealous in sending theirchildren to learn mathematics and English ratherthan about traditional culture, mainly due to admissionrequirements at key middle schools.”

　　Fingers were particularly pointed at the emphasisplaced on Chinese kids to learn English. Earlierin September, Wang Xuming, former Spokesman ofthe Ministry of Education, called through his Weibo(a Chinese microblog) to “cancel English class andenforce studies of Chinese ancient civilization in theelementary education” to save Chinese languageand culture.

　　Against this backdrop, the Ministry of Educationis planning on a policy to ease emphasis of Englishin mandatory examinations in primary schools.

　　As a fan of Hero of Hanzi, Zhang don’t agree with

　　the idea of eliminating English from elementary education.

　　“To competeunder the globalizationcontext, it’s still importantto master English,but we do have to paymore attention to ournative languages andtraditional culture,”Zhang said.

　　Since September,Zhang has made adaily plan to practiceher writing skills. “Theprogram reminds meof the beauty of Chinesecalligraphy that Ihave been proud of. Iwant to be a master ofit again.”

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