China News Service, Beijing, January 6 Title: Year-end inventory, why choose the Chinese character "carry on the top and start down"?
——Interview with Li Yuming, President of the Chinese Dictionary Society
China News Service reporter Ma Haiyan Jin Xu
As the world's oldest script in circulation so far, Chinese characters are the carrier of Chinese civilization, and in the long years, the unique rhyme of Chinese characters has also become a way for the world to understand Chinese civilization, using "characters" as the medium to promote cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries.
In recent years, the year-end inventory around the world, the annual Chinese character selection has attracted more and more attention, and is becoming a very ritualistic "cultural new year custom". Why choose the Chinese character "carrying up and starting down"? How does the annual Chinese character witness the international expression of Chinese character culture? How do Chinese characters convey the self-summary and spiritual resonance of people in various countries? Recently, Li Yuming, president of the Chinese Dictionary Society, was interviewed exclusively by China News Agency's "East and West Question" to interpret relevant issues.
In January 2014, calligraphers write Spring Festival in Flower Bed Square, Leping City, Jiangxi Province. Photo by Xu Zheng, China News Service
The interview transcript is summarized below:
China News Service: In 1995, "Zhen" was selected by Japan as the Chinese character of the year. Since then, the annual Kanji selection has become a selection event for regions that use Kanji in China, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore. Why?
Li Yuming: In Japan, Kanji is an integral part of its writing system, including 1945 Kanji and some chinese characters for personal names. Learning and using Kanji is an important part of Japanese language life. In 1995, the Kobe Earthquake struck Japan, and the character "earthquake" became the first kanji of the year in Japan. Since then, every year around December 12, the "Japan Kanji Proficiency Verification Association" announces at Kiyomizu-dera Temple in Kyoto that the Kanji characters that best reflect the hot spots in society and the people's sentiments of the world will be selected by the public.
Since 2001, Korean university professors, newspaper columnists and intellectual celebrities have selected an "annual idiom" as a year-end comment at the end of each year, which has become a way for South Korea to reflect current events, express wishes, and express emotions; in 2008, Taiwan held the "Taiwan Annual Representative Word Election"; in 2011, Malaysia began to select "Chinese Character of the Year"; Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao began to hold the "Year of Character Description" activity...
In November 2014, the annual Chinese Character Selection organized by the Malaysian Han Culture Centre officially kicked off, and the organizers announced the top ten candidate Chinese characters of the year. The picture shows ten candidate Chinese characters written by a Malaysian calligrapher. Photo by Zhao Shengyu, a reporter of China News Service
Chinese characters are the carrier of Chinese written language, are ideographic morpheme characters, itself has a strong "meaning tension", can show multiple meanings from glyphs and meanings, not only can be independent words, but also has a strong ability to group words, generate multiple meanings, express richer meanings. Historically, Chinese characters have played an important role in the formation of chinese language in many countries and regions, and the public has a sense of intimacy and identity with Chinese characters.
In addition, influenced by the traditional Chinese anagram game, some countries and regions around China will also use the characteristics of Chinese characters to form a new cultural custom of "annual words", according to the characteristics of complex Chinese character strokes, relatively independent sides, and changeable structural combinations, using clutches, increases and losses, pictograms, huiyi and other ways to create anagrams, which are used for entertainment, wine promotion, festival celebrations, and can also be used to comment on current politics and figure magic.
China News Service: Chinese character culture has played an important role in the dissemination and sharing of surrounding civilizations in history, and many ancient countries have used Chinese characters and literary language as written languages, forming a Chinese character cultural circle. How did Chinese characters spread overseas?
Li Yuming: Chinese goes abroad and goes to the world, dating back to the Qin and Han dynasties. At that time, the Chinese language spread to the homeland of Vietnam, and the Vietnamese dynasty used the written language in Chinese for more than a thousand years, even after the creation of the word "zi").
Before 1895, the Korean Peninsula used Chinese as a written language for a long time, teaching the children of the nobility in classics. In 788, the Silla kingdom announced the method of "learning by scripture", and later sent a large number of children to study in the Tang Dynasty and become officials. In order to allow Chinese characters to better record the Korean language, Xue Cong (645-701), who is said to be one of the "Ten Sages of Silla", created the "official reading", using some Chinese characters as phonetic symbols (sometimes borrowed character meanings).
Japan was the first to come into contact with Han culture through Baekje, and there were many cultural exchanges with China's Southern Dynasty, followed by the appearance of Sui envoys and Tang envoys. In 604 AD, Prince Tuigu promulgated the 17-article constitution in Chinese characters, which was a landmark event in Japan that used Chinese as official documents. In 645, the Dahua reform began to formally name "Japan", established the feudal system, formulated laws and decrees in Chinese, and also wrote history books in Chinese. In 712, The Chronicle of Ancient Events, compiled by Taian Manro, is the earliest work of Literature in Japan, written in Kanji. In 720, Prince Sheren used Chinese characters to compile the earliest history of Japan, the Nihon Shoki.
With the pace of the Chinese people setting foot in the sea, Chinese, Chinese characters, and Han culture have also been brought to the Ryukyu Islands, the Lanfang Republic in Borneo, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and other places. In the process of learning Chinese classics and using Chinese characters, these countries and regions have also absorbed a large number of Chinese loan words, and even used Chinese characters to create their own scripts. Today, they have their own written language, but Chinese characters still appear in some cultural fields, including some ancient cultural buildings and folk culture activities. Understanding Chinese characters, Chinese language and Chinese classics is still an inherent need of these countries and regions.
In January 2021, the China Science and Technology Museum in Beijing launched a series of new year's day science and technology exhibitions and science education activities. The picture shows a young audience member identifying ancient Chinese characters in the exhibition hall. Photo by Sun Zifa, a reporter from China News Service
China News Service: Nowadays, Europe and the United States also have annual Chinese character selections, how do you view the annual Chinese characters breaking the circle?
Li Yuming: In recent years, in addition to the traditional Southeast Asian Chinese language, North America is forming a distinctive New Chinese language, and Europe is also expected to form a new variant of the Chinese language. The phenomenon of "breaking the circle" in europe and the United States is closely related to the improvement of the social status of local Chinese people, the international application of Chinese and the improvement of international influence, and the increasingly important role played by China on the world stage.
At present, with the improvement of Chinese international communication ability, more and more foreigners are learning Chinese. By the end of 2020, more than 180 countries and regions around the world will carry out Chinese education, more than 70 countries will integrate Chinese into the national education system, more and more international organizations will use Chinese as their official or working language, and many international metropolises have opened Chinese services in transportation hubs, business centers and tourist resorts, including Chinese landscapes.
In July 2009, the Confucius Institute at Khon Kaen University in Thailand held the HSK Chinese Proficiency Test at basic level and junior high school level. Photo by Gu Shihong, a reporter of the China News Service
China News Service: In 2021, the annual Chinese character for Japan is "gold", the annual Chinese character for Malaysia and Singapore is "hope", the United States is "up", and France is "boiling". How do you view the regional differences in the annual Chinese character selection?
Li Yuming: The annual Chinese characters selected by various localities are a reflection of the social mentality of various places, which depends on both social reality and social psychology.
The word "jin" was chosen as Japan's 2021 Kanji of the Year because Japanese athletes won many gold medals at the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games, Shohei Otani won the Major League Baseball Most Valuable Player Award, and grants related to the COVID-19 pandemic attracted much attention.
"Jin" is the fourth time that kanji of the year has been selected in Japan.
Affected by the epidemic, China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, the United States and France have used different Chinese characters such as "epidemic", "home", "hope", "rise" and "boiling" to express their hope for an early end to the new crown pneumonia epidemic. For example, the elected Chinese characters in Malaysia and Singapore are all "hope", showing the expectation of a better tomorrow; the annual Chinese character in Taiwan is "home", which describes the home life of everyone turning into an otaku and otaku, "learning" and "working" are carried out online, and various "home economy" flourishes.
In December 2020, Malaysia's Chinese Character of the Year was unveiled in Kuala Lumpur, and the word "epidemic" was elected as Malaysia's Chinese Character of the Year 2020. Courtesy of the annual Chinese Character Organizing Committee
China News Service: As the most important users of Chinese characters living in China, many overseas Chinese and ethnic Chinese actively act as inheritors and disseminators of Chinese culture. How does the annual Chinese character selection reflect the historical development process of overseas Chinese and ethnic Chinese groups actively integrating into local society?
Li Yuming: Chinese (Chinese), or Chinese, is the mother tongue of Chinese people around the world, and is the cultural breast milk for the survival and development of Chinese people around the world. Overseas Chinese character selection is not only a cultural activity of living in the country, but also the active participation of overseas Chinese and ethnic Chinese, and even carried out with overseas Chinese as the main body. The social cognition and psychological emotions expressed by the annual Chinese characters are the organic integration of Chinese culture and local life, and the local social consciousness expressed in the form of Chinese characters.
In this regard, Chinese characters are Chinese, overseas Chinese, or the world; the content of the annual Chinese characters is that of overseas Chinese and chinese, as well as the people living in the country. "One leaf knows autumn", the annual Chinese character phenomenon tells us that the preservation of Chinese culture by overseas Chinese also promotes the cultural development of the country in which they live. The inheritance and development of overseas Chinese language is the "advance team" for Chinese and Chinese culture to the world, and it is also an overseas platform for Chinese and the internationalization of Chinese culture. (End)
Respondent Profiles:
Li Yuming, a second-level professor at Beijing Language and Culture University, enjoys special allowances from the State Council. He is currently the president of the Chinese Dictionary Society, the president of the Language Policy and Planning Committee of the Chinese Chinese Society, and the editor-in-chief of Language Strategy Research. His research interests include theoretical linguistics, grammar, psycholinguistics and language programming. He has published more than 30 books such as "Research on the Category of Chinese Quantity", "Study on Grammar", "Theory of Chinese Chinese Dialect Planning", "Research on Contemporary Chinese and Chinese Dialects" (editor-in-chief), published more than 600 papers, and edited the Global Chinese Dictionary and the Global Chinese Dictionary. The research results have been translated into Mongolian, Tibetan, Peacekeeping Day, French, English, Russian, Arabic, Korean and other languages.