Media
05.19.16
Backward Thinking about Orientalism and Chinese Characters
For those of us who teach and research the Chinese language, it is often difficult to describe how the Chinese characters function in conveying meaning and sound, and it’s always a particular challenge to explain how the writing system differs from...
Media
05.12.16
Chinese Is Not a Backward Language
Even in the age of China’s social media boom, and billion-dollar valuations for Beijing-based IT start-ups, prejudice against the Chinese language is alive and well. One would be forgiven for thinking that by 2016, the 20th century’s widespread...
Sinica Podcast
08.15.14
Finding the ‘Essence’ of China
from Sinica Podcast
This week, Kaiser Kuo and David Moser are delighted to host Jeremiah Jenne, Director at the Hutong, Beijing’s premier cultural exchange center, for a conversation that picks apart China’s obsession with “Chinese characteristics” and asks whether...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.21.13What the Word ‘Toad’ Can Tell You About China’s Modernization
Time
While users of a phonetic alphabet can sound out a word, writers of Chinese must memorize a series of character strokes unique to that word, and the strokes have to be executed in a precise order.
ChinaFile Recommends
07.05.12Peter Hessler on His Surprising First Trip to China
Asia Blog
I first went to China in 1994, after finishing two years of graduate school at Oxford. I had studied English language and literature, which I enjoyed, but I realized that I wanted to do something different with my career. I knew that I wanted to...