Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist)

Introduction
 
  Few contemporary societies take their writing culture as seri- ously as China. The oldest living language spoken by the most people, at the same time ancient and modern, Chinese is currently used by more than 1.3 billion people not counting those around the globe who learn it as a second language. Its written form has remained largely unchanged since it was first standardized more than 2,200 years ago. By comparison, the number of letters in the Roman alphabet fluctuated until the sixteenth century, when the letter j split from i and completed the twenty-six-letter set.

Chinese heads of state are probably the only political leaders in the world who can still be seen demonstrating their cultural prowess at official occasions, in their case by dashing off a few characters or auspicious phrases with an ink brush. Deng Xiaoping was reputedly a bit shy, but his immediate predecessor and onetime rival, Hua Guofeng, devoted his late life to the practice, and former president Hu Jintao was fond of displaying his penmanship in public. Mao s calligraphy still sits prominently on the masthead of the country s official newspaper, the People s Daily, and recent computerized handwriting analysis showed that Xi Jinping s style is remarkably similar. Such showmanship not only serves as a daily reminder of the leader s legitimacy but also rein- forces the importance of a cultivated skill that has been the hallmark of China s ruling elite since the time long before nations. Calligraphy, in fact, is one of the few practices of the Chinese tradition that survived the country s twentieth-century revolt against its feudalistic past.

It s hard to imagine an American president or European head of state opening an official state ceremony or visit with a show of penmanship. But in the Chinese context, literacy means something more than just knowing how to read and write. It has traditionally signaled many things: the mark of being steeped in the

Jing Tsu

Praise for Kingdom of Characters:

Rigorous and engaging. . . . Languages, as this book makes clear, convey worlds. New York Times

A lively and insightful history of the intersection of China s information technology systems and its language revolution. The book is a richly documented, riveting, and scholarly rigorous transnational account of how Chinese evolved from a hard-to-learn script entrenched in the beleaguered Middle Kingdom in the 19th century to a global language in the 21st century.   Science

A fascinating book The Economist

A lively chronicle of the inventors who gave their all to make the Chinese script compatible with modern life. The Guardian

Enchanting... [Tsu's] love for the enigma and beauty of Chinese shines through in this delightful mix of history and linguistics... A pleasure to read. The Sunday Times (London)

Erudite and beautifully written. Rana Mitter, The Times Literary Supplement (London)

A well-told story about those who created modern China not through the barrel of a gun or a little red book but through dictionaries, libraries and printing presses. The Spectator (UK)

Stimulating. Nature

Interesting and very readable. Peter Gordon, Asian Review of Books

Pioneering   Physics World

[A]n immersive history of the effort to transform the written Chinese language s vast and complex set of characters into a modern communication technology . . . Tsu sheds light on the intriguing interplay between Chinese language and politics. Sinophiles and language buffs will be fascinated. Publisher's Weekly

Tsu s humanistic, big-picture sensibility makes an otherwise obscure thread in the history of information technology vivid and compelling.   Booklist

An engaging, relevant work that delves into the linguistic past in order to predict China s future success in the world. Kirkus (starred review)
 
In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu introduces us to a cast of unforgettable