In the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, under the advice of some people of insight, the arrangement of characters that had lasted for thousands of years was changed, from vertical arrangement to horizontal arrangement, which undoubtedly greatly facilitated people's reading and writing, and was a move for the benefit of the country and the people. However, Chen Yinke, a master of Chinese studies, resolutely opposed this, and even made a will.
As we all know, in ancient times in the mainland, the arrangement of words was vertically arranged, the reason why this is the case, because before the appearance of paper, bamboo slips were the most important carrier of words, limited by conditions, the text can only be arranged vertically.
Later, with the popularization of paper, bamboo slips slowly withdrew from the historical stage, but people have long been accustomed to the vertical arrangement of words, and this writing habit has also been retained.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, under the influence of Western culture, some publications began to use the horizontal arrangement of printed words, and among experts and scholars, there were also voices in favor of horizontal arrangement, but due to the background of the times, it was not implemented on a large scale.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, drastic reforms were carried out in the cultural field, and some feudal dross was abandoned. At the 1950 National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Mr. Tan Kah Kee first proposed that he hoped to change the way the characters were arranged from vertical to horizontal.
However, due to the fact that there were many problems that needed to be solved at that time, this suggestion was not taken seriously.
After the end of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, the mainland entered a period of steady development, and the issue of the arrangement of characters was once again put on the agenda. In 1955, Guangming Daily published a report on the use of horizontal typesetting, and elaborated on the benefits and significance of horizontal typesetting in the report, which attracted widespread attention.
Guo Moruo was very interested in the practice of Guangming Daily, and he also conducted an experimental comparison, and found that the horizontal arrangement was smoother than the vertical arrangement, both in terms of writing speed and reading speed. Therefore, Guo Moruo formally proposed to the relevant departments, hoping to promote the horizontal arrangement of words across the country.
Guo Moruo believes that the two eyes of the human being are horizontally distributed, so it is more suitable for the horizontal arrangement of words, and the horizontal arrangement can effectively reduce the visual pressure of people.
The People's Government attached great importance to Guo Moruo's suggestion, and for this purpose, it also conducted experiments in schools, and the results showed that the reading speed of horizontal text was 0.3 times faster than that of reading vertical text. The results of this experiment attracted the attention of the entire cultural community, and more and more experts and scholars began to support Guo Moruo's suggestion, so that the time was ripe to change the way the text is arranged.
However, the famous linguist Chen Yinke raised objections. Chen Yinke has made great achievements in the fields of classical literature and linguistics, and has devoted his life to the study of traditional culture. It should be noted that as a master of Chinese studies, Chen Yinke not only has high cultural attainments, but also the stubbornness and rigidity of traditional literati. Although this quality represents the integrity and character of the literati to a certain extent, it can also become an obstacle to the development of new things.
Chen Yinke believes that the horizontal arrangement of characters is an opportunistic behavior, and the vertical arrangement of characters has lasted for thousands of years, and if this method is to be changed, it will inevitably cause the decline of Chinese characters, which is quite unfavorable to the inheritance and development of culture. In addition, Chen Yinke also expressed strong dissatisfaction with the simplification of Chinese characters.
Chen Yinke's objection is not unreasonable, and before that, many people proposed to abolish Chinese characters and replace them with letters, which is quite a bold idea, and once implemented, it will mean the complete extinction of traditional culture. Therefore, Chen Yinke deeply hates the practice of changing traditional culture.
Chen Yinke's opposition did not help, and in 1956, the first edition of the People's Daily used horizontal typesetting in all new year, which marked the official implementation of the traditional typesetting method in the mainland.
Since then, books and newspapers published in China have adopted horizontal typesetting, and the vertical typesetting that has been practiced for thousands of years has completely ended in China. Such a result is obviously something that Chen Yinke does not want to see, and he has repeatedly issued statements denying the horizontal typesetting. However, the development and innovation of culture is not controlled by people's will, and the change of text layout has become a powerful trend of the times, which is difficult for anyone to change.
Seeing that the denial was fruitless, Chen Yinke made a will in a fit of anger that his works must be published vertically, and he also emphasized that his works must be published in traditional Chinese characters, otherwise they are not allowed to be published.
Facts have proved that Chen Yinke's worries are superfluous, and the development of traditional culture to this day has not completely disappeared, but has been revitalized.