Chinese civilization has a long history, a long and continuous history. How did this trait come about? Why has our civilization never stopped? This can be seen from Chinese characters, the core elements of Chinese civilization. Chinese characters are a writing symbol system that originated from the land of China, mainly recorded Chinese and has multiple functions, and is a typical representative of the ideographic writing system. The continuity of Chinese civilization is highlighted by the continuity of Chinese characters, which transcend the boundaries between tradition and modernity and are still in use today. Although the form of this writing system has changed, its internal deep structure has never undergone fundamental changes, and the recorded language has been inherited from ancient to modern, and the documents formed are rich and continuous. A modern person who can read ancient books, if he opens the ancient books copied by the Western Han people more than 2,000 years ago, the dyslexia is very small, which is unique in the world. In the early 70s of the 20th century, Shirakawa Shirakawa, a well-known Japanese scholar, once said: "In a sense, Chinese culture is the culture of Chinese characters, and the various characteristics of Chinese characters have added a strong color to Chinese culture." "Chinese characters have also radiated to the surrounding ethnic groups, forming a unique cultural circle, that is, the Chinese character cultural circle. ”
In November 2022, the continuation of the Chinese Character Museum and the Chinese Character Park were officially opened to the public. Located in Anyang City, Henan Province, the Museum of Chinese Characters is a national first-class museum with the theme of writing. The picture shows the first phase of the Chinese Character Museum. Photo by China News Service Wang Zirui.
Chinese characters have greatly enhanced the cohesion and centripetal force of the Chinese nation. China has a vast land, many dialects, and many ethnic languages, and a unified script has built an important foundation for national unity and ethnic integration. In 221 B.C., when Qin Shi Huang unified the whole country, he ordered the implementation of the policy of "writing with words" to ensure the transmission of government decrees and the unity of ideology and culture. After the Qin Dynasty, Chinese characters underwent a long evolution of fonts. Although the world was divided and dynasties changed, the tradition of Chinese characters as a common language has never wavered. Historically, most of the ethnic minorities who entered the Central Plains took the initiative to embrace Han culture and learn Chinese characters. During the Northern and Southern Dynasties, in order to integrate Tuoba Xianbei into the culture of the Central Plains, Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei Dynasty implemented the reform of sinicization, established Chinese as the official language, and required learning Chinese, using Chinese characters, and wearing Hanfu, which had a huge impact on promoting ethnic integration. During the Song Dynasty, the Liao, Western Xia, and Jin regimes established by the northern ethnic minorities were also influenced by Han culture, and their self-created ethnic scripts borrowed from the radicals of Chinese characters.
The Chinese nation is not simply a fusion of human races and blood, but an entity of cultural identity, and Chinese characters play an important role in the formation and development of the Chinese nation. The countries of the world that use phonetic scripts, whether they are the Roman Empire or Charlemagne, once they are nation-states that use smaller phonetic writing systems, it is difficult to unify into a culturally continuum country. China is different, in this land, there are changes of dynasties, there are changes of regimes, but our writing is the same, the culture is the same, the division will be together for a long time, and it will always be the victory of unity, which is closely related to the supralinguistic function of Chinese characters. Chinese characters do not record the language through the encoding method of directly expressing the phonetics, but record the Chinese language through a variety of coding forms based on ideograms, so that it has two characteristics: on the one hand, it can accurately record the language, and Chinese characters are mature writing systems, which are compatible with the Chinese language, can record the spoken language of various eras, can form a written language, and make the language more rigorous; On the other hand, Chinese characters can transcend dialects, different eras can be pronounced with different sounds, and different regions can be pronounced with different sounds, no matter what sounds are read, their meaning is not only historically continuous, but also socially known, and the written language has long played the function of a common language. Therefore, although the dialects vary greatly from place to place, and the languages of different eras also vary greatly, there has always been a unified script. Although some Western scholars deny the ideograms represented by Chinese characters from the perspective of the function of recording language, they also point out that they have great advantages from the perspective of the social function of ideograms, that is, they are not bound by the linguistic image of words, so that people in various dialect areas can understand what they write each other.
Chinese characters are an important carrier of Chinese history and culture. China is a unified multi-ethnic country, which has given birth to a pluralistic and integrated Chinese civilization, and the inheritance and continuation of Chinese civilization mainly rely on written records and the preservation of classics. For example, the oracle bone inscriptions record sacrifices, hunting, battles, agriculture, medical inquiries, and weather during the Shang Dynasty. Jin Wen records the economic, political, cultural, military, and social life of the Zhou Dynasty. Throughout the history of world civilization, in many countries that use phonetic scripts, once the political power is replaced by a foreign ruler, the phonetic semantics of the written records have changed radically, even if the letters are the same and the languages recorded are different. The language recorded in the written records of the previous dynasty cannot be understood today, and the history written in the present dynasty cannot be understood in the next dynasty, and of course there will be no uninterrupted and continuous historical records. However, in China, the former dynasties perished, the later dynasties still used the same writing system, and the successive dynasties still used the same writing system, and there was no obstacle to reading before and after, so the historical records of civilization for thousands of years have been uninterrupted, and various documents are rich and diverse, and the inheritance is orderly.
Chinese characters contain the genetic code of Chinese culture, and many Chinese characters themselves record the production and living conditions of people at that time. Through these Chinese characters, we can feel the life of our ancestors and even the psychological state of their ancestors. Therefore, the Chinese have always had a sense of reverence for writing, which is reflected in the inheritance relationship in the evolution of Chinese characters, such as the "Three-Body Stone Classic" in the Cao Wei period, where the inscriptions are written in three scripts: ancient script, small seal and Han li; On the other hand, it is reflected in the preservation and inheritance of documents and calligraphy of previous dynasties by later generations, such as the Song Dynasty's "Chunhua Pavilion Post" which includes a large number of works by calligraphers of previous dynasties. It is the reverence for words that has allowed the history and culture of the Chinese nation to be passed down for thousands of years to the present day and carried forward.
Chinese characters highlight the unique charm of Chinese culture. Literature is the art of language, which is the commonality of literature. Chinese literature is not only the art of language, but also the art of writing. When we read the Tang poem "The window contains the snow of Xiling Thousand Autumns, and the door is anchored in the ship of Dongwu Wanli", we can only read two lines of poetry linearly, if it is written:
The window contains a thousand autumn snow in Xiling, and the door is berthed in the Dongwu Wanli ship.
In this way, we see another nonlinear structure: door-to-window, berth-to-contain, east-to-west, ......Noun to noun, verb to verb, this opposition is a non-linear visual structure. Poetry is not only to be read, but also to be seen. As the famous scholar Jao Tsung-i said: "Chinese characters are only partially phonetic, and the characters are not verbalized, but combined with the art of calligraphy and painting and the high beautification of literary forms and sounds, resulting in the great tree of Chinese characters, with lush branches and leaves, unique elegance, and the interlocking relationship between words, literature, and art (calligraphy), which constitutes the most fascinating charm of Han culture." ”
All kinds of writing in the world strive for the beauty of writing, but only Chinese characters have developed a unique art - calligraphy. The variety of Chinese characters provides superior conditions for the formation of rich and beautiful visual effects, and is combined with aphorisms, famous works, and seal carvings, so that the excellent traditional culture can be inherited in the process of appreciating the art of calligraphy. At the same time, calligraphy also contains the deep feelings of the Chinese family and country, and practicing calligraphy is more about character and temperament. Yan Zhenqing's "Manuscript for the Sacrifice of Nephews" in the Tang Dynasty is majestic and intense, and the whole article is full of heroic and righteous atmosphere; In the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yunming copied the "Yueyang Tower" in cursive script, which was to "worry about the worries of the world first, and enjoy the joy of the world after the world" as the spiritual power.
For more exciting content, please see: Li Shoukui's article "Chinese Characters and the Inheritance of Chinese Civilization" in the 3rd issue of "Seeking Truth" in 2024
Curator: He Wenwen).