WHO THE
HECK SIMPLIFIED THE CHINESE CHARACTERS?
We are all at the mercy of the authors of our language. The
qualifications of the authors would eventually reflect on our own
qualifications as a civilized being. And there is nothing that
shapes the character of a nation more than its language.
China has been blessed with authors who had qualifications that were of
divine proportion. The language characters, in fact, have over
thousands of years themselves become the repository of China's
culture. In her wisdom to place culture above all else, such as
science and technology, China has arrogantly pushed her pictorial
characters to their fullest artistic splendor, at the expense of
practicality. And what followed in the same splendor is the
culture.
Should humanity finally attain everlasting peace, the last three
hundred
years would be remembered as a time when technology raped
culture. Culture has been the only viable obstacle to stampede of
militarism. And that made culture the first
and biggest victim.
Before 30 years ago in China, resisting this rape has been the single
one-track-minded
preoccupation. Externally, such resistance was triggered by the
Opium War, Boxer Rebellion and Nanking Massacre. Internally, they
were the Chritian Taipintenkwo Revolt and the democratic revolt of the
Christian President Sun Yat Sen. Finally, the one-sided assault
was halted by Mao's burn-the-house-to-kill-the-rat strategy.
Chinese had to actually turned on its own culture. The other
alternative is
that the culture would be replaced by those of the rapists, like it did
in
Japan.
Good intentions often fell into wrong hands. When it comes
to the prestigious job of deculturize the language, it attracted ego
maniacs like cow poop attracts flies.
Who were this bunch who took upon themselves to get into the brains of
every Chinese by altering how they thinks? What were they
themselves thinking when they blank out the vital parts of the master
pieces of paintings that were our characters? Were they sending us a
message? What was it? Dont anyone out there care?
Would we do it again, given the chance? What are the pros and
cons?
The other desperate move China made was to keep her birth rates
in pace with the anticipation of the same fast slaughtering rate that
the harassing
American arsenal is capable of. The
dire consequence is obvious: A much lonelier household for each
family today.
This mistake is too late to correct, but not that of the
language. We need to look critically at the consequence of
simplified characters? The
brain has one
detrimental defect -- it cannot see how itself thinks. It seems
the self-appointed guardians are buying time for the new generation to
be fully
immersed in the trashed language, that someday trash may start to
taste good. And this
is why it's urgent that we must look into the sneak attack.
I have tried three times to search out these mysterious fellows by
visiting Beijin twice. The first time, just prior to the
first Iraq War. I was able to contact the Kuwai Embassy there and
convinced some people there that there was an non-destructive way of
getting the Iraqis out. But I was completely ignored by my
contacts regarding my desire to meet with some authority in charge of
the language.
In my second visit five years later, my contact from the Diplomatic
Corp finally have to politely warn me that there is law against the use
or promoting the use of traditional characters. He sounded like
we were breaking the law just talking about it.
But he did arranged for me to visit the infamous Tzung Tse Tung, the
person who initiated the Ping Pong Diplomacy and made what happening in
China today all possible. When I found out that he is a master
calliographer, the subject naturally came up. As I almost had him
convinced of my point, my daughter, being an professional journalist,
protested that I should be interview Tzung, not the other way around.
To tell you the truth, I am getting a little paranoid in my lonely and
unpopular crusade. I even try to comfort myself with the
comforting thought: Maybe these guys are leftovers from the old
eunuches of the Ching court. For them, lesser is better.