When people commented on how difficult it is to learn to
write the Chinese characters, I can’t deny it. Even the Children in Asia often
make mistakes while learning to write characters. Then, as now, a teacher’s
only advice is to tell students to practice more by re-writing each character
10 or 20 more times.
A significant difference between English and Chinese is that
Chinese is not alphabetic, so the writing is not related to its phonetics.
Chinese characters evolved into a text by the graphics, sound, and meaning from
their varied combinations. The features of the Chinese characters are: mono,
single body, and square structure.
While discussing the history of the Chinese characters, I
like to use “creation” while some people refer to their history in terms of
“origin”. I prefer to think it term of the characters having been “created” to
show respect for ancient sages of innovative thinking. The Chinese characters
are representative of the significant accomplishments and contributions of
ancient Chinese philosophers. The characters are not the product of random
activity, but are representative of disciplined intellectual thought and
design.
The development of the Chinese character evolved over three
periods: First, by “Chang-jei” in Huang-di period, 2698-2598 BC; Second, with
the first emperor of Qin dynasty who unified the text, 221-206 BC, and lastly,
the contemporary writing system currently used by and taught to Chinese people.
It is generally accepted that Chang-jei created text, which
is a founding point of the Chinese character, and, the origin of the Chinese
characters in the history. Chang-jei advanced the interpretation and definition
of the “text”, which is the standard of the Chinese characters. The character that
do not follow the CJ standard cannot be called a Chinese character.
The Chinese character is a complex system, but formulated
and unified by logical thought. For example, learning the character for ‘person’人(Rén), ‘big’ 大(dà),
‘sky’ 天(tiān), and
‘man/husband ‘夫(fu), we can further understand their meaning
based on shape, combination, and relationship.
Chang-jei created text is the origin of Chinese language
coordination. Again, the character that does not followed the CJ standard is
not to be recognized as Chinese character. Because the CJ standard is more than
just a symbol, it represents the development, evolution, and the unique history
of China. When the emperor of Qin dynasty, Qin-Shi-Huang, unified the Chinese
characters, he distinguished the event, time, space, and relationship of each
character to reveal the CJ standard. This was a more significant event in
Chinese history.
