Youth Book Digest 2022-01-20 12:00
The earliest surviving Chinese characters in China are the oracle bones that appeared in the Yin Shang period more than 1300 years ago, and after thousands of years of evolution and development, different types of characters such as jinwen, large seal, small seal, lishu, cursive, calligraphy, calligraphy and so on have gradually appeared.
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However, this is not the earliest history of Chinese characters, the history of Chinese characters can be traced back to 6,000 years ago, that is, the so-called "hieroglyphs" period.
Chinese characters have not only had a profound impact on China, but even the languages of neighboring countries have also been influenced by it, such as Japanese and Korean.
However, Chinese characters also have "awkward" times! For example, Mr. Liu Bannong, a famous literary artist on the mainland, was scolded by Chinese women as a "dog blood sprinkler" because he invented a new Chinese character. What's going on here?
Before solving this problem, let's briefly introduce this Liu Bannong!
Liu Bannong was born in the seventeenth year of Guangxu (1891) of the Qing Dynasty to a poor intellectual family in Jiangyin City, Jiangsu Province. Although the family was poor, fortunately, my father was a reader, and although eating every day became a problem, he had enough spiritual food.
Liu Bannong was clever and clever since childhood, and with the careful teaching of his father, he was able to recite poems at the age of six. And his talent was destined to make a big difference in literature.
In the second year of the Republic of China (1913), Liu Bannong worked as a compiler at the Zhonghua Book Company, and published more than forty novels he translated and created in publications such as "Current Affairs New Newspaper" and "Novel Circle", detailing the works of famous writers such as Hans Christian Andersen and Dumas.
During this period, his diligent work also allowed him to understand literature more deeply.
In 1917, the sixth year of the Republic of China, Liu Bannong published an article in the New Youth entitled "My View of Literary Reform", which contained his profound insights into the literary revolution. And this also made Mr. Cai Yuanpei, the president of Peking University at the time, sigh that "there are such talents".
In the same year, Cai Yuanpei hired Liu Bannong, who only had a junior high school education, as a preparatory Professor of Chinese Literature!
Although this peking university professor has received an old-style education since he was a child, his thinking does not stay in the old-style education system, but is very open and advanced. In 1920, he wrote an article called "Teach Me How not to Miss Her", which caused quite a stir.
Of course, it's not that this article is perfectly written, but he created a new Chinese character in this article- "she". Because when Liu Bannong was working as a compiler, whenever he translated the word "she", he always felt very troublesome.
Because in ancient China, "he" refers to everything, there is no so-called "it" and "she". Therefore, when he encounters the word "she", he can only translate it as "that woman" or "his daughter", which is very twisted to read, which greatly affects the expression and reading experience.
Therefore, in view of this, Liu Bannong simply invented an image of the word "she".
In today's view, this word is very concise, and the meaning is also in place, which is a very good Chinese character. But in the early days of the Republic of China, this word was promoted, but it was difficult. Why?
We know that under the wave of the new cultural movement, women are fighting for equal rights one after another, and even some women have committed suicide because of the failure of the school.
In such a historical environment, Liu Bannong specially created a Chinese character for women, not for men, so many people have said, why is there no difference between men and women in the first person, and it is necessary to distinguish between men and women in the third person? Therefore, Liu Bannong naturally became the target of the attack.
In addition, some feminists have also raised objections to this, and some even scolded Liu Bannong, saying that this is no longer a feudal society, and now the pursuit of equality between men and women, the emergence of this word is to deliberately distinguish between men and women, so as to form a difference in status.
In addition to women across the country, some feudal conservative forces also carried out years of verbal abuse and attacks on Liu Bannong.
It is worth mentioning that on April 3, 1920, the magazine "Newcomer" published an article entitled "This is Liu Bannong's Fault", in which he criticized the word "she" by name as the initiator and advocated its immediate abandonment.
Of course, there are oppositions, naturally there are also supports, such as Ye Shengtao, Zhou Zuoren, Lu Xun and other literary circles of big names have gladly accepted this way of writing, and also use this word to advocate the liberation of women in their works, thus giving it an extremely clear political connotation.
Later, because Hu Shi, Lu Xun and other articles often used "she" instead of "Yi", the word was gradually promoted. And when people got used to this word, they no longer attacked Liu Bannong, and even praised him for inventing this word!
In fact, creating a new Chinese character is never an easy task, because the created word needs to meet many requirements, such as simplicity, connotation performance, people's cognitive acceptance, and so on.
Therefore, later, Mr. Lu Xun also gave high praise to Liu Bannong's creative spirit, saying that the creation of the word "she" was to fight a "big battle". But the bitterness and bitterness behind the creation of the word, I am afraid that only Liu Bannong himself knows!
Nowadays, we use the word "she" all the time, and this word is no longer limited to women, and now we also use "she" to refer to our motherland, and many beautiful things and so on.