The Language Revolution That Made China Modern
November 29, 2021
Tsu, a professor of East Asian language and literature at Yale, debuts with an immersive history of the effort to transform the written Chinese language’s vast and complex set of characters into a modern communication technology. Noting that Chinese ideographic writing is “fundamentally unique, distinct from any other writing system in the world,” Tsu details how China’s struggle for sovereignty during the 19th century, when the opium wars resulted in harsh trade agreements and territorial losses, sparked innovations and reform efforts by Chinese scholars, politicians, and inventors who believed the written language was a barrier to development. Tsu describes efforts to develop and promote the Mandarin alphabet, adapt characters for telegraphic transmission, and develop a typewriter to replicate characters. Communist leader Mao Zedong’s efforts, meanwhile, to simplify Chinese characters and make the language easier for Westerners to learn dramatically improved the country’s literacy rate and eventually reduced the number of characters from tens of thousands to 2,235. Tsu also explores the history of typesetting and modern printing in China, and the evolution of Chinese characters in the internet age. The level of detail occasionally slows the book’s pace, but Tsu sheds light on the intriguing interplay between Chinese language and politics. Sinophiles and language buffs will be fascinated.