Song Nianshen commented on "Chinese and the East Asian World"| looking back at Chinese from the East Asian world

"Chinese and the East Asian World", by [Han] Kim Wenjing, New Classics Amber| published by Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore in October 2022, 224 pages, 49.00 yuan

"Chinese and the East Asian World" is a small book for the general reader, but it is not easy to read.

Please don't get me wrong: not easy does not mean the difficulty of the text or the topic, but refers to the deep concern for history, culture, nationality and region behind its concise subject matter and Xiaochang language. The modern dilemma of the East Asian world revealed by the author, Professor Kim Wen-kyung, goes beyond the topic itself.

"Chinese and the East Asian World" is about the history of precepts. Reading, a common cultural phenomenon in ancient China, the Korean Peninsula, Japan and Vietnam, simply put, is that the intellectual elite whose mother tongue is not Chinese read and use Chinese literature by transforming the pronunciation and grammar of the text. The focus of the book is on the history of pre-19th century training in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.

Kim Wen-kyung, a Korean native living in Japan, is engaged in the research and teaching of Chinese classical literature at Kyoto University. The first Japanese edition of this book was published in 2010, and although the Chinese edition is a translation of the Japanese edition, Professor Jin deliberately added and rewrote some of the content to suit Chinese readers, which is equivalent to rewriting the book with Chinese.

Introducing a book on how the ancient East Asian world learned Chinese to today's Chinese readers is meaningful in itself. Perhaps the biggest question for Chinese readers is: Chinese is my mother tongue, why do I need to know how "others" learn "our" language?

This sentence itself is a question that needs to be examined in detail in the historical context. Because the so-called "ours" and "other people's" have different meanings in different eras, the relationship between them may not be as diametrically opposed as today.

In all parts of the world, there is a lingua franca phenomenon at certain historical stages, such as Greek and Latin in Europe, Sanskrit in South Asia, Arabic in the Middle East, and Chinese in East Asia. Not all those who accept and use these scripts speak as their mother tongue, but this does not prevent the lingua franca from being the most important vehicle for their spiritual production. In this sense, the lingua franca can be understood as a public good, and the producer is not necessarily the person of "origin".

Moreover, this recourse to "origin" did not have much meaning before the language and writing were standardized by modern countries. For example, although the Chinese classical Chinese language based on the corresponding meaning of the characters is the common written language in ancient China, there are so many Chinese dialects, great local differences, and so many historical changes, even if Chinese is a native speaker, it is impossible to master their own written language without special study.

And when people who speak different dialects chant the same ancient poem with very different intonations, isn't this also a kind of "precept reading"? Before Mandarin or Putonghua became the standard and was forcefully promoted by modern countries, who could say that only my reading at this time was the only correct one? The book mentions that "pen talk" was a common form of communication between officials in ancient China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. In fact, it is not uncommon for speakers of different Chinese dialects to use text rather than speech to achieve more effective communication.

Therefore, when we take it for granted that Chinese characters are "ours", we should realize that in the long historical process of the East Asian world, this language and writing have played an important role in communicating different regions, eras, and cultures, and it has never been monopolistic or exclusive.

By the same token, when non-native speakers – the so-called "others" – use Chinese characters to carry their own culture, it does not mean a complete acceptance of the Central Plains cultural and educational system, let alone a certain dissolution of their own cultural identity. On the contrary, the taking and converting foreign languages into the languages of one's own nation is often accompanied by the strengthening of one's own sense of subjectivity. Sometimes, precepts even become an expression of a worldview that goes beyond the instrumental level.

A typical example given in The Chinese Language and the East Asian World is the ancient Japanese re-translation of Buddhist scriptures from Chinese. Through the Chinese translation of Sanskrit Buddhist scriptures, the Japanese realized certain grammatical similarities between Sanskrit and Japanese, and thus constructed the idea of "Sanskrit and oneness". The translation and spread of Buddhism in East Asia not only became the theoretical basis for Japanese precepts (50 pages), but also provided a way to express Japan's unique civilizational status. The Japanese believe that Indian Buddhist gods can be transformed into native Shinto deities through "local drape", so as to "integrate inside and outside". The closely related idea of "Brahman and oneness" also provides (unscientific) linguistic "proof" for Japan to argue that it has the same civilizational status as India and China. In the words of the book, it is "borrowing India's religious authority, resisting Chinese influence, and maintaining Japan's national identity" (p. 54). Similar situations are found in North Korea, Vietnam and other places.

The main body of Chinese characters and Chinese characters undoubtedly comes from the Central Plains, but when it was "taken" for Japan, the Korean Peninsula, Vietnam and other places, it was transformed into a local area and continued to develop in the local soil. Taking writing as an example, the "kanji" (Kanji, Hanja and Chu Han) in Japanese, Hanja and Vietnamese are not exactly equivalent to the Central Plains Chinese characters. The ancient Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese were more flexible in choosing the principle of Chinese characters to create scripts (kana, proverbs and mums) that expressed their own national languages, and were creatively used on the basis of acceptance.

Therefore, as native speakers, we need to realize that Chinese is both "ours" and "theirs". To understand this, we must not only see the commonalities of East Asian cultures, but also pay attention to their inherent differences.

It is the diametrical sense of boundary between "us" and "them" that should be considered more. It is important to understand that the traditional antagonism of cultures is not the norm in history, but is the result of the forced intervention of the concept of the nation-state in East Asia in recent times.

Nation-states seek absolutely clear boundaries between states, both in the sense of territory, sovereignty, and people, and in culture, history, psychology, and even everyday life. It seems that everything must be divided into one you and me, mine cannot be yours, and yours cannot be mine.

For a long time, the East Asian world has been closely integrated and frequently flowed in terms of materials, people, cultural products and ideas. The sense of exclusivity and either/or boundaries emphasized by modern sovereign states is alien to this historical experience. However, the legitimacy of the nation-state seems to have to be based on an infinite emphasis on subjectivity. The so-called "uniqueness" of culture has become an absolute indicator of national legal system. As a result, written languages that used to be based on the meaning of glyphs have been transformed into phonetic-based writing languages. For example, the Korean Peninsula and Vietnam replaced Chinese with proverbs and Latinized Chinese characters, respectively. On the contrary, in Japan, where training is most developed, because Chinese has been integrated with the local language, Chinese characters are still retained after "leaving Asia".

Today, the most convenient way for the generally educated people in East Asian countries is already English. English is a pinyin script, so each East Asian language has its own set of pinyin rules. However, each language actually shares a large number of Chinese words, but the pronunciation is different. As a result, the same word, converted according to different pinyin methods, will become unrecognizable and lose its intrinsic meaning connection. For example, the word "Joseon" as the name of the dynasty is written as Chaoxian (Hanyu Pinyin), Chōsen (Pingwen Romaji), and Joseon (Korean Bunkanbu-style)/Chosŏn (Ma-Rai style), which not only loses the meaning of "Asahi Distinct", which is clearly felt in their respective documents, but also separates and separates the words. Moreover, because each kind of "Korea" has a certain difference in meaning in different national, historical, and political contexts, if it is particularly true, several pinyins cannot be agreed or interchanged.

This is true not only among contemporary states, but also within China, phonecentrism cannot deal with its pluralistic and complex history. For example, the Qing Dynasty was founded for the Manchus, but the name "Qing" is generally believed to be derived from the Chinese language, as opposed to "Ming". If in order to emphasize the Manchu-Chinese boundary, it is necessary to transliterate the general standard of country names from "Qing" in Hanyu Pinyin to "Daicing" in Manchu Pinyin, although this superficially highlights "ethnic characteristics", it artificially separates the originally organic, fluid and flexible daily language practice.

Although words are instrumental, they also carry historical memories like materials, rituals, and rituals. When words divide you and me according to the principle of the boundaries of the modern state, does the memory it carries also have to be divided into you and me? Does it leave some room for a shared past?

This is Professor Kim Wen-kyung's concern in writing this book: the East Asian world, once connected by Chinese characters, has become increasingly fragmented under the impact of European modernity. Phoneocentrism, which seems to respect the equal status of different languages, forcibly negates "the exchange relationship between the cultural circle of East Asian characters that has lasted for nearly two thousand years" (p. 209). And this denial does not stop at words. This year's Winter Olympics, because China's Korean compatriots wore national costumes at the opening ceremony, caused the "Hanbok controversy" in the South Korean media, providing a vivid and helpless annotation for this small book written twelve years ago.

It is always easy to criticize the "narrow national consciousness" of one's own country or another. What is really difficult is our real situation, which is really awkward, almost nothing - language, writing, clothing, food... Not to mention historical memory and cultural identity – the ability to escape the cage defined by modern national boundaries. Kim Wenkyung said he has no answer to the future path of the East Asian world, "but it is precisely because of the uncertain future that we should look back and see the road we have traveled."

In my opinion, this kind of "looking back" is especially important for our Chinese today, because to think beyond borders, it always starts with me.