It is hoped that "Knowledge of Chinese Characters" will become a necessary education for writers

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Pay attention to the "Everyone's Little Book" and forward this tweet to the circle of friends, and send screenshots to the background. The editor will select 5 lucky readers from it, give away a copy of "Chinese Character Knowledge", and announce the list of winners on January 2 (Sunday).

A new member has been added to the "Little Books for Everyone" series: Mr. Guo Xiliang's "Knowledge of Chinese Characters" has been newly revised and republished.

This is a continuation of fate: it was originally compiled from Mr. Guo Xiliang's lectures on Chinese characters taught three times at Peking University in the 1960s and 1970s, and was approved by Mr. Wang Li and included in the "Language Small Series" planned by Wu Han. The series of books first included Lu Zongda's "A Brief Discussion on Exhortations" and Wang Li's "Brief Discussion on Chinese". However, Mr. Wang Li commented on his disciple's book: "The content is very comprehensive and in-depth, not a brief discussion, and the title of the book should be changed to 'Chinese character knowledge'." The book was published in 1981 and was first printed in 67,000 copies.

In 2002, the Beijing Publishing House inspected the old family foundation and planned the "Little Book for Everyone" based on the "Language Small Series" and so on. Naturally, the reprint of "Knowledge of Chinese Characters" was proposed, which is a veritable "little book for everyone", a book written to everyone by a scholar of ancient Chinese with enthusiasm for the popularization of knowledge. In 2015, I contacted Mr. Guo Xiliang, who said that the book still needed new revisions. In the middle of the news, another publishing house plans to republish the book. Beijing Publishing House was fortunate to have Lu knong, as a student of the 1980 Peking University Chinese class, impressed Mr. Guo with the friendship between teachers and students, and in October 2016, Mr. Guo decided to hand over the book to Beijing Publishing House for re-publication. Finally, Professor Shao Yonghai of the Department of Chinese of Peking University (majoring in Ancient Chinese) helped complete the revision of the "Knowledge of Chinese Characters" and collected pictures and text specimens, which took a lot of effort.

On September 6, 2020, Teacher Shao Yonghai asked me if "Knowledge of Chinese Characters" could be printed out earlier, and at the "Academic Symposium to Celebrate the Ninetieth Birthday of Mr. Guo Xiliang", Mr. Guo intended to sign it to more than 40 friends and disciples attending the meeting. I was surprised and moved by the fact that a ninety-year-old man wanted to deliver books for so many students. On the 7th, I got a prepress sample book of "Chinese Character Knowledge", but found that this book still had flaws that needed to be improved and needed to be partially republished. After receiving the promise of the printing factory to ensure that the sample book would be delivered to the Ancient Chinese Teaching and Research Office of Peking University on September 18, I hurried back to Teacher Shao: the time for signing the inscription was definitely too late, and I could only borrow Mr. Guo's seal on the 19th to make 50 plutonium prints.

At the "Academic Symposium to Celebrate the Ninetieth Birthday of Mr. Guo Xiliang", Mr. Guo sent this surviving booklet to each guest and student, saying: "I myself have just seen the new edition of "Chinese Character Knowledge". He also reminded that we must not leave behind those disciples who are stranded in other places and overseas because of the epidemic and other reasons. Mr. Guo is known for his rigidity, and the many details of the book reveal his deep affection.

In the early 1990s, when I was studying at Peking University, the ancient Chinese textbooks in the Chinese class were the four volumes of "Ancient Chinese" edited by Mr. Wang Li; the textbooks for non-Chinese majors were Guo Xiliang, Tang Zuofan, He Jiuying, Jiang Shaoyu, Tian Ruijuan, and the three volumes of "Ancient Chinese" edited by Wang Li and Lin Tao. As a student of the literature class, I studied Mr. Guo's three volumes, so I knew Mr. Guo's name for the first time, but he no longer gave classes to undergraduates, so to us, Mr. Guo was like a legend. Later, on the sample bookshelf of the Beijing Publishing House, I caught a glimpse of the three-volume "Ancient Chinese", and only then did I realize that the book was originally published by the Beijing Publishing House. Mr. Meng Guo's introduction, this can be counted as a frontier between me and the Beijing Publishing House.

Publishing "Knowledge of Chinese Characters", Yu Responsible Editor is indeed a self-challenge. It took about two months from finalization to printing. After all, I am a layman in philology, and editing this book requires relearning. Fortunately, this book has been checked by Professor Shao Yonghai many times when it was entered, and Mr. Guo Xiliang has also read it word by word twice. Therefore, at the academic symposium on Mr. Guo's ninetieth birthday, a teacher asked me whether Mr. Guo belonged to the authors who were easy to deal with, or the authors who were not easy to deal with, and I resolutely replied: "I belong to the authors who are easy to deal with, because now the words are careful, and there are not many authors who have a special language pursuit." A manuscript like the Knowledge of Chinese Characters, which is particularly Qi Qingding, is difficult. ”

The real challenge is not only time, but more importantly, how to avoid the minefield of quality inspection. Fortunately, the student with a literature major can be the editor together, she is responsible for the overall process, and she knows the new rules of proofreading and quality inspection better than I do. The book "Knowledge of Chinese Characters" analyzes traditional characters, so it is inevitable that there will be a mixture of complexity and simplicity, and you cannot imagine that if the law of the evolution of Chinese characters can be clearly expressed after being completely standardized by the Modern Chinese Dictionary. This reminds me of my elementary school teacher who taught us the word "guo" in dialect (pronounced guī in our local dialect), and the teacher said loudly: "guó, guó, guó of the middle guī." For example, the book says, "Come(Come), which is the coming of the wheat, under the pretense of coming and going." "If the font is simplified, it does meet the quality inspection standards, but can you clearly understand the relationship between "lai" and "mai"?

In today's book quality inspection, many specious people have biblicalized the "Modern Chinese Dictionary", do not understand the basic knowledge of Chinese characters, do not understand the basic composition of Chinese words, do not understand the subtle differences between some words, do not understand the extension of a word context on the false judgment, this can not seriously hurt the flexibility of the Chinese language? Therefore, the author insists that language and writing as a kind of communication, as long as the communicator conveys the meaning to the audience without ambiguity, it is a complete task. There is no need to complete the author's "land", conjunctions, mood words, and subject-predicate formalities. Whether the academic keywords are correct or not, and whether the meaning is clearly conveyed or not, is more important. Is it necessary for us to compare the true "all of chapter one" and "all of chapter one" of which is right and which is wrong? Is the problem of unification and non-unification and the problem of variants really so important? Quality inspection is to better improve the quality of books, rather than standardize the richness and creativity of the Chinese language.

"Knowledge of Chinese Characters" is important because it discusses the identification of book quality standards. Of course, I can't guarantee that I am correct in all the use of Simplified and Traditional Chinese and punctuation in Chinese Character Knowledge, but I hope that the content of this book will become a kind of common sense and make it a necessary education for writers.

The Knowledge of Chinese Characters is also very important for calligraphy and seal engraving. Many of our calligraphy works have gone astray, and the misuse of complexity and simplicity is naturally a problem, and some so-called masters have imagined those shapes and sounds as hieroglyphs. There are also some calligraphy works of people who pursue fanaticism and neglect to respect the Chinese characters themselves.

Some people ask, which of the many inventions in ancient China is the most important? One of the first answers is: Chinese characters. Chinese characters are not only a writing instrument, but also the carrier of the excellent traditional Chinese culture that we remember, and at the same time the most core part of our traditional culture. Without a little knowledge of Chinese characters and classical bibliographic background, what is the inheritance of China's excellent traditional culture?

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