If, as Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, you can infer a nation’s spirit from its language, then what to make of modern Chinese?
- Associated Press
- Pupils write the Chinese character “He” — recently named the most Chinese of Chinese characters — with brushes during a ceremony to celebrate Confucius’ birthday at the Confucius Temple in Qufu, his birthplace, east China’s Shandong Province.
In a revealing exercise, China Heritage—a National Geographic-like monthly with a glossy interest in the roots of Chineseness—recently organized an effort to identify the 100 Chinese characters that “carry the most meaning for Chinese culture.”
The results are fascinating, alternately rife with political irony and revealing of a Chinese reality not always apparent to outsiders.
Culled from an initial pool of 374 characters suggested by an unidentified committee of historians and linguists, the most Chinese of Chinese ideograms was identified as 和 (pronounced ‘huh’ and typically Romanized as ‘he’)—the character for an indistinct concept often (though clumsily) translated as “peace” or “togetherness.”
The selection won’t come as a surprise to China watchers. He is the first character in both “harmonious society” (和谐社会; hexie shehui) and “peaceful rise” (和平崛起; heping jueqi) —terms the Chinese Communist Party has recently coined to explain its domestic and foreign policies, respectively, and which are therefore printed ad nauseam in newspapers and on propaganda banners throughout the country. (As a Xinhua report about the list notes, the words “harmony” and “peace” featured heavily in the Zhang Yimou-directed opening ceremonies at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.)
Read more at CHINAREALTIMEREPORT
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