We announces our Book Discussion selection, Kingdom of Charact | 我們愛中華學會

We announces our Book Discussion selection, Kingdom of Characters by Jing Tsu.

Kingdom of Characters is a superbly written and extremely illuminating book, not just about the Chinese written language but also about the tumultuous history of China’s modern era and how inextricably linked language is culture and identity.

Her book follows the challenges of bringing the Chinese language into technological modernity over the last century or so that was mainly ordered by Western assumptions that established alphabetic scripts as the norm of intercontinental communication. The challenges she follows include establishing a national vernacular, a functioning typewriter, making the telegram work for Chinese characters, navigating a university card catalogue, character simplification and pinyin Romanization, and digitization.

Follow along with us this month as we read on August 2022 and book discussion will be held by September 30 2022.