Chinese Character
CHINESECHARACTER
Activities Chinese Learning around the World Confucius Institutes Chinese Bridge Chinese Bridge Summer Camp
Dictation Assembly of Chinese Characters Hero of Chinese Characters
Inscriptions on Ancient Bronze Objects金文(钟鼎 文/大篆) 1 San Family Plate散氏盘
Discovery Site : Baoji City Shaanxi Province
Discovery Time: Qing dynasty of Emperor Qianlong
Small Seal Script 小篆
Introduction a style of calligraphy, adopted in the Qin Dynasty for the purpose of standardizing the script. Features 1 square and upright. 2 straight forward basic principles 3 well-balanced in space 4 tightening in upper part and loosing in lower part
Duke Mao Tripod 毛公鼎
as one of the four treasures and the longest existing inscirptions, in which the history and political strategies in the Western Zhou dynasty are worth studying.
ChineseCharacter(《汉字》英文版)简介
龙源期刊网 Chinese Character（《汉字》英文版）简介作者：冯志伟来源：《华文教学与研究》2018年第01期[关键词] 汉字；六书；部件；笔划；树形图分析法[摘要] 介绍了Chinece Characters（《汉字》英文版）一书的主要内容和特色。
该书论述了汉字的起源、演变和结构，分析了现代汉字的部件和笔划。
[中图分类号]H02； H12 [文献标识码]A [文章编号]1674-8174（2017）03-0088-02外语教学与研究出版社在2017年3月出版了冯志伟和詹宏伟合著的Chinese Characters （《汉字》英文版）一书，笔者作为该书的作者之一，在此对这本用英文写的关于汉字的书，向国际汉语教学界作一个简明的介绍。
1. 引言文字是文化的重要组成部分，是极为珍贵的文化宝库。
书写符号是文化的载体，是人类智慧的结晶，是人类文明的精华，是照耀人类进步的灿烂明珠。
通过书面文字进行交际的能力是人类最值得关注的独有的能力。
目前，越来越多的外国学者和友人对中华文化和它的载体（汉字）产生了浓厚的兴趣，希望更全面、更深入地了解汉字，在汉语的国际教育中，正在学习汉语和将要学习汉语的学生们也希望了解汉字。
该书用英文来介绍汉字的演变与结构的基本知识，希望有助于他们通过英文来了解汉字和中华文化，推动国际间的交流和对话。
对于正在用英文讲授汉字的华文教师，该书也是一本方便实用的教学参考。
2. 全书主要内容该书共10章，222页。
第1章讲述汉字的起源，介绍了汉字的萌芽形式（新石器时代的刻符）和汉字的雏形（陶器上的陶符），说明了文字符号和非文字符号之间的差别。
第2章讲述汉字形体的历史演变，分别介绍了甲骨文、金文、大篆、小篆、隶书、草书、楷书、行书的性质和特点。
第3至8章分别讲述汉字的六书，除了论述六书的理论之外，还列举了一些有代表性的汉字，就它们的构形原理举例进行了分析。
对于大多数的汉字例子，都给出了它们的甲骨文、金文和小篆的字形；不过，对于学术界尚未定論的某些字形，为慎重起见，只好暂付阙如。
罗素经典散文The Chinese Character
The Chinese Character, by Bertrand RussellThere is a theory among Occidentals that the Chinaman is inscrutable, full of secret thoughts, and impossible for us to understand. It may be that a greater experience of China would have brought me to share this opinion; but I could see nothing to support it during the time when I was working in that country. I talked to the Chinese as I should have talked to English people, and they answered me much as English people would have answered a Chinese whom they considered educated and not wholly unintelligent. I do not believe in the myth of the "Subtle Oriental": I am convinced that in a game of mutual deception an Englishman or American can beat a Chinese nine times out of ten. But as many comparatively poor Chinese have dealings with rich white men, the game is often played only on one side. Then, no doubt, the white man is deceived and swindled; but not more than a Chinese mandarin would be in London.One of the most remarkable things about the Chinese istheir power of securing the affection of foreigners. Almost all Europeans like China, both those who come only as tourists and those who live there for many years. In spite of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, I can recall hardly a single Englishman in the Far East who liked the Japanese as well as the Chinese. Those who have lived long among them tend to acquire their outlook and their standards. New arrivals are struck by obvious evils: the beggars, the terrible poverty, the prevalence of disease, the anarchy and corruption in politics. Every energetic Westerner feels at first a strong desire to reform these evils, and of course they ought to be reformed.But the Chinese, even those who are the victims of preventable misfortunes, show a vast passive indifference to the excitement of the foreigners; they wait for it to go off, like the effervescence ofsoda-water. And gradually strange hesitations creep into the mind of the bewildered traveller; after a period of indignation, he begins to doubt all the maxims he has hitherto accepted without question. Is it really wise to be always guarding against future misfortune? Is itprudent to lose all enjoyment of the present through thinking of the disasters that may come at some future date? Should our lives be passed in building a mansion that we shall never have leisure to inhabit?The Chinese answer these questions in the negative, and therefore have to put up with poverty, disease, and anarchy. But, to compensate for these evils, they have retained, as industrial nations have not, the capacity for civilized enjoyment, for leisure and laughter, for pleasure in sunshine and philosophical discourse. The Chinese, of all classes, are more laughter-loving than any other race with which I am acquainted; they find amusement in everything, and a dispute can always be softened by a joke.I remember one hot day when a party of us were crossing the hills in chairs--the way was rough and very steep, the work for the coolies very severe. At the highest point of our journey, we stopped for ten minutes to let the men rest. Instantly they all sat in a row, brought out their pipes, and began to laugh amongthemselves as if they had not a care in the world. In any country that had learned the virtue of forethought, they would have devoted the moments to complaining of the heat, in order to increase their tip. We, being Europeans, spent the time worrying whether the automobile would be waiting for us at the right place. Well-to-do Chinese would have started a discussion as to whether the universe moves in cycles or progresses by a rectilinear motion; or they might have set to work to consider whether the truly virtuous man shows_complete_ self-abnegation, or may, on occasion, consider his own interest.One comes across white men occasionally who suffer under the delusion that China is not a civilized country. Such men have quite forgotten what constitutes civilization. It is true that there are no trams in Peking, and that the electric light is poor. It is true that there are places full of beauty, which Europeans itch to make hideous by digging up coal. It is true that the educated Chinaman is better at writing poetry than at remembering the sort of facts which can be looked up in_Whitaker's Almanac_. A European, in recommending a place of residence, will tell you that it has a good train service; the best quality he can conceive in any place is that it should be easy to get away from. But a Chinaman will tell you nothing about the trains; if you ask, he will tell you wrong. What he tells you is that there is a palace built by an ancient emperor, and a retreat in a lake for scholars weary of the world, founded by a famous poet of the Tang dynasty. It is this outlook that strikes the Westerner as barbaric.The Chinese, from the highest to the lowest, have an imperturbable quiet dignity, which is usually not destroyed even by a European education. They are not self-assertive, either individually or nationally; their pride is too profound for self-assertion. They admit China's military weakness in comparison with foreign Powers, but they do not consider efficiency in homicide the most important quality in a man or a nation. I think that, at bottom, they almost all believe that China is the greatest nation in the world, and has the finest civilization. A Westerner cannot be expected to acceptthis view, because it is based on traditions utterly different from his own. But gradually one comes to feel that it is, at any rate, not an absurd view; that it is, in fact, the logical outcome of a self-consistent standard of values. The typical Westerner wishes to be the cause of as many changes as possible in his environment; the typical Chinaman wishes to enjoy as much and as delicately as possible. This difference is at the bottom of most of the contrast between China and the English-speaking world.We in the West make a fetish of "progress," which is the ethical camouflage of the desire to be the cause of changes. If we are asked, for instance, whether machinery has really improved the world, the question strikes us as foolish: it has brought great changes and therefore great "progress." What we believe to be a love of progress is really, in nine cases out of ten, a love of power, an enjoyment of the feeling that by our fiat we can make things different. For the sake of this pleasure, a young American will work so hard that, by the time he has acquired his millions, he has become avictim of dyspepsia, compelled to live on toast and water, and to be a mere spectator of the feasts that he offers to his guests. But he consoles himself with the thought that he can control politics, and provoke or prevent wars as may suit his investments. It is this temperament that makes Western nations "progressive."There are, of course, ambitious men in China, but they are less common than among ourselves. And their ambition takes a different form--not a better form, but one produced by the preference of enjoyment to power. It is a natural result of this preference that avarice is a widespread failing of the Chinese. Money brings the means of enjoyment, therefore money is passionately desired. With us, money is desired chiefly as a means to power; politicians, who can acquire power without much money, are often content to remain poor. In China, the _tuchuns_ (military governors), who have the real power, almost always use it for the sole purpose of amassing a fortune. Their object is to escape to Japan at a suitable moment; with sufficient plunder to enable them to enjoy life quietly for the rest of their days. The fact that inescaping they lose power does not trouble them in the least. It is, of course, obvious that such politicians, who spread devastation only in the provinces committed to their care, are far less harmful to the world than our own, who ruin whole continents in order to win an election campaign.The corruption and anarchy in Chinese politics do much less harm than one would be inclined to expect. But for the predatory desires of the Great Powers--especially Japan--the harm would be much less than is done by our own "efficient" Governments. Nine-tenths of the activities of a modern Government are harmful; therefore the worse they are performed, the better. In China, where the Government is lazy, corrupt, and stupid, there is a degree of individual liberty which has been wholly lost in the rest of the world.The laws are just as bad as elsewhere; occasionally, under foreign pressure, a man is imprisoned for Bolshevist propaganda, just as he might be in England or America. But this is quite exceptional; as a rule, inpractice, there is very little interference with free speech and a free Press.[96] The individual does not feel obliged to follow the herd, as he has in Europe since 1914, and in America since 1917. Men still think for themselves, and are not afraid to announce the conclusions at which they arrive. Individualism has perished in the West, but in China it survives, for good as well as for evil. Self-respect and personal dignity are possible for every coolie in China, to a degree which is, among ourselves, possible only for a few leading financiers.The business of "saving face," which often strikes foreigners in China as ludicrous, is only the carrying-out of respect for personal dignity in the sphere of social manners. Everybody has "face," even the humblest beggar; there are humiliations that you must not inflict upon him, if you are not to outrage the Chinese ethical code. If you speak to a Chinaman in a way that transgresses the code, he will laugh, because your words must be taken as spoken in jest if they are not to constitute an offence.Once I thought that the students to whom I was lecturing were not as industrious as they might be, and I told them so in just the same words that I should have used to English students in the same circumstances. But I soon found I was making a mistake. They all laughed uneasily, which surprised me until I saw the reason. Chinese life, even among the most modernized, is far more polite than anything to which we are accustomed. This, of course, interferes with efficiency, and also (what is more serious) with sincerity and truth in personal relations. If I were Chinese, I should wish to see it mitigated. But to those who suffer from the brutalities of the West, Chinese urbanity is very restful. Whether on the balance it is better or worse than our frankness, I shall not venture to decide.The Chinese remind one of the English in their love of compromise and in their habit of bowing to public opinion. Seldom is a conflict pushed to its ultimate brutal issue. The treatment of the Manchu Emperor may be taken as a case in point. When a Westerncountry becomes a Republic, it is customary to cut off the head of the deposed monarch, or at least to cause him to fly the country. But the Chinese have left the Emperor his title, his beautiful palace, his troops of eunuchs, and an income of several million dollars a year. He is a boy of sixteen, living peaceably in the Forbidden City. Once, in the course of a civil war, he was nominally restored to power for a few days; but he was deposed again, without being in any way punished for the use to which he had been put.Public opinion is a very real force in China, when it can be roused. It was, by all accounts, mainly responsible for the downfall of the An Fu party in the summer of 1920. This party was pro-Japanese and was accepting loans from Japan. Hatred of Japan is the strongest and most widespread of political passions in China, and it was stirred up by the students in fiery orations. The An Fu party had, at first, a great preponderance of military strength; but their soldiers melted away when they came to understand the cause for which they were expected to fight. In the end, the opponents of the AnFu party were able to enter Peking and change the Government almost without firing a shot.The same influence of public opinion was decisive in the teachers' strike, which was on the point of being settled when I left Peking. The Government, which is always impecunious, owing to corruption, had left its teachers unpaid for many months. At last they struck to enforce payment, and went on a peaceful deputation to the Government, accompanied by many students. There was a clash with the soldiers and police, and many teachers and students were more or less severely wounded. This led to a terrific outcry, because the love of education in China is profound and widespread. The newspapers clamoured for revolution. The Government had just spent nine million dollars in corrupt payments to three Tuchuns who had descended upon the capital to extort blackmail. It could not find any colourable pretext for refusing the few hundred thousands required by the teachers, and it capitulated in panic. I do not think there is any Anglo-Saxon country where the interests of teachers would have roused the samedegree of public feeling.Nothing astonishes a European more in the Chinese than their patience. The educated Chinese are well aware of the foreign menace. They realize acutely what the Japanese have done in Manchuria and Shantung. They are aware that the English in Hong-Kong are doing their utmost to bring to naught the Canton attempt to introduce good government in the South. They know that all the Great Powers, without exception, look with greedy eyes upon the undeveloped resources of their country, especially its coal and iron. They have before them the example of Japan, which, by developing a brutal militarism, a cast-iron discipline, and a new reactionary religion, has succeeded in holding at bay the fierce lusts of "civilized" industrialists. Yet they neither copy Japan nor submit tamely to foreign domination. They think not in decades, but in centuries. They have been conquered before, first by the Tartars and then by the Manchus; but in both cases they absorbed their conquerors. Chinese civilization persisted, unchanged; and after a few generations theinvaders became more Chinese than their subjects.Manchuria is a rather empty country, with abundant room for colonization. The Japanese assert that they need colonies for their surplus population, yet the Chinese immigrants into Manchuria exceed the Japanese a hundredfold. Whatever may be the temporary political status of Manchuria, it will remain a part of Chinese civilization, and can be recovered whenever Japan happens to be in difficulties. The Chinese derive such strength from their four hundred millions, the toughness of their national customs, their power of passive resistance, and their unrivalled national cohesiveness--in spite of the civil wars, which merely ruffle the surface--that they can afford to despise military methods, and to wait till the feverish energy of their oppressors shall have exhausted itself in internecine combats.China is much less a political entity than a civilization--the only one that has survived from ancient times. Since the days of Confucius, the Egyptian,Babylonian, Persian, Macedonian, and Roman Empires have perished; but China has persisted through a continuous evolution. There have been foreign influences--first Buddhism, and now Western science. But Buddhism did not turn the Chinese into Indians, and Western science will not turn them into Europeans. I have met men in China who knew as much of Western learning as any professor among ourselves; yet they had not been thrown off their balance, or lost touch with their own people. What is bad in the West--its brutality, its restlessness, its readiness to oppress the weak, its preoccupation with purely material aims--they see to be bad, and do not wish to adopt. What is good, especially its science, they do wish to adopt.The old indigenous culture of China has become rather dead; its art and literature are not what they were, and Confucius does not satisfy the spiritual needs of a modern man, even if he is Chinese. The Chinese who have had a European or American education realize that a new element, is needed to vitalize native traditions, and they look to our civilization to supply it. But they do notwish to construct a civilization just like ours; and it is precisely in this that the best hope lies. If they are not goaded into militarism, they may produce a genuinely new civilization, better than any that we in the West have been able to create.So far, I have spoken chiefly of the good sides of the Chinese character; but of course China, like every other nation, has its bad sides also. It is disagreeable to me to speak of these, as I experienced so much courtesy and real kindness from the Chinese, that I should prefer to say only nice things about them. But for the sake of China, as well as for the sake of truth, it would be a mistake to conceal what is less admirable. I will only ask the reader to remember that, on the balance, I think the Chinese one of the best nations I have come across, and am prepared to draw up a graver indictment against every one of the Great Powers. Shortly before I left China, an eminent Chinese writer pressed me to say what I considered the chief defects of the Chinese. With some reluctance, I mentioned three: avarice, cowardice and callousness. Strange to say, myinterlocutor, instead of getting angry, admitted the justice of my criticism, and proceeded to discuss possible remedies. This is a sample of the intellectual integrity which is one of China's greatest virtues.The callousness of the Chinese is bound to strike every Anglo-Saxon. They have none of that humanitarian impulse which leads us to devote one per cent. of our energy to mitigating the evils wrought by the other ninety-nine per cent. For instance, we have been forbidding the Austrians to join with Germany, to emigrate, or to obtain the raw materials of industry. Therefore the Viennese have starved, except those whom it has pleased us to keep alive from philanthropy. The Chinese would not have had the energy to starve the Viennese, or the philanthropy to keep some of them alive. While I was in China, millions were dying of famine; men sold their children into slavery for a few dollars, and killed them if this sum was unobtainable. Much was done by white men to relieve the famine, but very little by the Chinese, and that little vitiated by corruption. It must be said, however, that the efforts of the whitemen were more effective in soothing their own consciences than in helping the Chinese. So long as the present birth-rate and the present methods of agriculture persist, famines are bound to occur periodically; and those whom philanthropy keeps alive through one famine are only too likely to perish in the next.Famines in China can be permanently cured only by better methods of agriculture combined with emigration or birth-control on a large scale. Educated Chinese realize this, and it makes them indifferent to efforts to keep the present victims alive. A great deal of Chinese callousness has a similar explanation, and is due to perception of the vastness of the problems involved. But there remains a residue which cannot be so explained. If a dog is run over by an automobile and seriously hurt, nine out of ten passers-by will stop to laugh at the poor brute's howls. The spectacle of suffering does not of itself rouse any sympathetic pain in the average Chinaman; in fact, he seems to find it mildly agreeable. Their history, and their penal codebefore the revolution of 1911, show that they are by no means destitute of the impulse of active cruelty; but of this I did not myself come across any instances. And it must be said that active cruelty is practised by all the great nations, to an extent concealed from us only by our hypocrisy.Cowardice is prima facie a fault of the Chinese; but I am not sure that they are really lacking in courage. It is true that, in battles between rival tuchuns, both sides run away, and victory rests with the side that first discovers the flight of the other. But this proves only that the Chinese soldier is a rational man. No cause of any importance is involved, and the armies consist of mere mercenaries. When there is a serious issue, as, for instance, in the Tai-Ping rebellion, the Chinese are said to fight well, particularly if they have good officers. Nevertheless, I do not think that, in comparison with the Anglo-Saxons, the French, or the Germans, the Chinese can be considered a courageous people, except in the matter of passive endurance. They will endure torture, and even death, for motives which men of morepugnacious races would find insufficient--for example, to conceal the hiding-place of stolen plunder. In spite of their comparative lack of _active_ courage, they have less fear of death than we have, as is shown by their readiness to commit suicide.Avarice is, I should say, the gravest defect of the Chinese. Life is hard, and money is not easily obtained. For the sake of money, all except a very fewforeign-educated Chinese will be guilty of corruption. For the sake of a few pence, almost any coolie will run an imminent risk of death. The difficulty of combating Japan has arisen mainly from the fact that hardly any Chinese politician can resist Japanese bribes. I think this defect is probably due to the fact that, for many ages, an honest living has been hard to get; in which case it will be lessened as economic conditions improve. I doubt if it is any worse now in China than it was in Europe in the eighteenth century. I have not heard of any Chinese general more corrupt than Marlborough, or of any politician more corrupt than Cardinal Dubois. It is, therefore, quite likely that changed industrialconditions will make the Chinese as honest as weare--which is not saying much.I have been speaking of the Chinese as they are in ordinary life, when they appear as men of active and sceptical intelligence, but of somewhat sluggish passions. There is, however, another side to them: they are capable of wild excitement, often of a collective kind. I saw little of this myself, but there can be no doubt of the fact. The Boxer rising was a case in point, and one which particularly affected Europeans. But their history is full of more or less analogous disturbances. It is this element in their character that makes them incalculable, and makes it impossible even to guess at their future. One can imagine a section of them becoming fanatically Bolshevist, or anti-Japanese, or Christian, or devoted to some leader who would ultimately declare himself Emperor. I suppose it is this element in their character that makes them, in spite of their habitual caution, the most reckless gamblers in the world. And many emperors have lost their thrones through the force of romantic love, although romanticlove is far more despised than it is in the West.To sum up the Chinese character is not easy. Much of what strikes the foreigner is due merely to the fact that they have preserved an ancient civilization which is not industrial. All this is likely to pass away, under the pressure of the Japanese, and of European and American financiers. Their art is already perishing, and being replaced by crude imitations of second-rate European pictures. Most of the Chinese who have had a European education are quite incapable of seeing any beauty in native painting, and merely observe contemptuously that it does not obey the laws of perspective.The obvious charm which the tourist finds in China cannot be preserved; it must perish at the touch of industrialism. But perhaps something may be preserved, something of the ethical qualities in which China is supreme, and which the modern world most desperately needs. Among these qualities I place first the pacific temper, which seeks to settle disputes on grounds ofjustice rather than by force. It remains to be seen whether the West will allow this temper to persist, or will force it to give place, in self-defence, to a frantic militarism like that to which Japan has been driven.。
psg3the Chinese Character
• Social background of China during 1900-1919:
• 八国联军侵华战争（1900-1901） • 西方资本主义国家进入帝国主义阶段以后，对外侵 略的要求变为资本输出和分割世界。中国人民为反 对外国侵略，掀起了轰轰烈烈的义和团运动，清政 府企图利用义和团抵制外国侵略。为了镇压中国人 民的反抗斗争和迫使清政府屈服，英、俄、日、法、 德、美、奥、意联合发动了侵华战争。这次战争镇 压了中国人民的反抗斗争，迫使清政府彻底屈服并 与西方十一国签订了《辛丑条约》，中国完全沦入 半殖民地半封建的深渊。从此，清政府彻底成为帝 国主义统治中国的工具。
• *Western learning:
• “The New Culture Movement” refers to the enlightening movement of thought which took place in the period from 1915 to the eve of the May 4th Movement with the magazine “New Youth” as the chief standard-bearer. In the movement democracy and science were greatly propagated while feudal politics and culture were criticized. Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao and Lu Xun were among its leading spirits. As a most profound movement of emancipation of thought, the movement blazed a trail in introducing and disseminating new thought filling needs of Chinese society. • 西方学识× • 西学√
Chinese_Traditional_Culture_Book_Chinese_Character
News Reports About PublishingNOVEMBER 2022 | 69Chinese Traditional Culture Book Chinese Characters, Chinese People (Chinese and English Version) Officially PublishedT he book Chinese Characters, Chinese People was selected by the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee as one of the key publications of 2022’s thematic publishing and is a key topic of research on major theoretical and practical issues in Shandong Province in 2022, compiled by the Publicity Department of Shandong Provincial Party Committee.Taking Chinese characters as the starting point and according to the different methods Chinese people adopt in lives and virtue cultivation, the book is divided into six relatively independent yet interrelated parts: self-discipline and helping others, filial piety and love for the family, serving and altruism, frugality and greenness, joint contribution and shared benefits, and harmony and commonwealth, each part including 17 to 18 Chinese characters, totaling 107 Chinese characters. Each character is presented with a small essay on Chinese national culture of about 2,000 words. By elaborating on the evolution of the character’s form and connotation and its values, it will help readers understand the essence of the Chinese nation’s core values and the fruits and values of the common human civilization they carry. The English version of Chinese Characters, Chinese People , while ensuring the accuracy of the translation, provides a more easy-to-understand English interpretation of the relevant traditional cultural concepts in the book. A young British sinologist, Mr. Benjamin Coles, was invited to review this version to ensure that overseas readers can have a better understanding of Chinese culture and Chinese people.The Chinese characters in this book can help the present generation, especially the youth, to rediscover, recognize, and inherit the qualities, strengths, and confidence of the Chinese people. It can also help foreigners who want to understand Chinese culture more intuitively get a taste of the unique features of Chinese characters and the essence of Chinese culture.The analysis of the “sublime words with deep meaning” embodied in Chinese characters can give us insight into some of the mysteries of traditional Chinese culture and help us use its multidimensional cultural values to understand our ancestors, to know ourselves, to serve the present generation, and to benefit our offspring. The First Issue of International Confucian Studies (English Version) was Published and an Academic Seminar was Held in Beijing R ecently, the Academic Seminar on International Confucian Studies (English Version) and the publication of its first issue were held in Beijing, co-organized by the International Confucian Association and Beijing Foreign Studies University and hosted by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. More than 1,000 scholars from cultural and educational circles at home and abroad gathered and participated in this activity online. International Confucian Studies is an important publication of the International Confucian Association, which launched the Chinese version in May 2021 in cooperation with Tsinghua University. The publication of this English version has set up an interactive platform for experts and scholars of Confucianism and Chinese traditional culture studies from different countries to innovate and exchange information and reflections. International Confucian Studies (English Version) will better promote the refining and spreading of Chinese civilization, encourage communication and interaction with the splendid civilization that has lasted for thousands of years, contribute to the mutual understanding, interaction, respect and learning of people from all countries, and take the cultural exchange and mutual appreciation between China and foreign countries to a higher level, said Jia Deyong, Secretary General of the International Confucian Association. Yang Dan, Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee and President of Beijing Foreign Studies University, stressed that the English V ersion of International Confucian Studies , as a high-standing and high-level academic journal towards the world, is conducive to the distillation of contemporary values from the wisdom of Confucianism in line with the development of the times and the construction of China’s international academic discourse power based on the shared values of all humankind, so that Chinese civilization, together with the colorful civilizations around the world, can contribute new wisdom, new ideas, and new solutions to promote world peace and development, and to promote the building of a community with a shared future of mankind.。
汉字的发展(英文版介绍)Chinese__character
Bronze Inscriptions（金文） refer to ancient inscription cast or carved on the bronze ware（青铜 器）. They are used From Shang,Zhou to Qin,Han dynasties, but the main findings are the words on the bronze ware of western zhou dynasty.
The Chinese Language
Is the oldest, continuous written language in the World
First written over 5,000 years ago The inventors of the written language drew
Regular script（楷书）
It became popular in the Jin Dynasty （晋朝 ）as we know the famous calligraphers such as Wang Xizhi（ 王羲之）, Wang Xianzhi （王献之） and the like.
汉字的发展
the development of Chinese
characters
Oracle Bone Inscription 甲骨文 Bronze Inscriptions 金文 Seal Script 篆书 Official Script 隶书 Regular Script 楷书 Cursive Script 草书 Running script 行书
中国汉字
Chinese Characters
汉字的英文介绍 Chinese Character(课堂PPT)
点击添up加标题
点击添加标题
down
木(mù) + 一=本(běn)
tree
root
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LO: To learn to talk about jobs/workplaces and where people do things
last
8g
3. Another method of creating new characters is to integrate two or more existi点ng击c添h加a标ra题cters to create a new character with a new meaning.
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1
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Do you know how long is Chinese in literature written?
China is the only country in the world with a literature written in one language for more than 3,000 consecutive years.
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刀(d点ā击o添) 加+标丶题=刃(rèn)
knife
点击添加标题
blade
木(mù) + 一=本(běn)
tree
root
LO: To learn to talk about jobs/workplaces and where people do things
7
one
点击添加t标w题o
5
xiàngxíng
Pictograms
1. Pictograms characters derive from pictures, they have been standardize点d,击s添im加p标li题fied, and stylized to make them easier to write, and their derivation is there点fo击re添n加o标t 题always obvious. Examples include for sun for 点击添加标m题oon, and ľ for tree.
The-Chinese-Character中国人的性格
The-Chinese-Character中国人的性格The Chinese Characterby Bertrand RussellThere is a theory among Occidentals that the Chinaman is inscrutable, full of secret thoughts, and impossible for us to understand. It may be that a greater experience of China would have brought me to share this opinion; but I could see nothing to support it during the time when I was working in that country. I talked to the Chinese as I should have talked to English people, and they answered me much as English people would have answered a Chinese whom they considered educated and not wholly unintelligent. I do not believe in the myth of the "Subtle Oriental": I am convinced that in a game of mutual deception an Englishman or American can beat a Chinese nine times out of ten. But as many comparatively poor Chinese have dealings with rich white men, the game is often played only on one side. Then, no doubt, the white man is deceived and swindled; but not more than a Chinese mandarin would be in London.One of the most remarkable things about the Chinese is their power of securing the affection of foreigners. Almost all Europeans like China, both those who come only as tourists and those who live there for many years. In spite of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, I can recall hardly a single Englishman in the Far East who liked the Japanese as well as the Chinese. Those who have lived long among them tend to acquire their outlook and their standards. New arrivals are struck by obvious evils: the beggars, the terrible poverty, the prevalence of disease, the anarchy and corruption in politics. Every energetic Westerner feels at first a strong desire to reform these evils, and of course they ought to be reformed.But the Chinese, even those who are the victims of preventable misfortunes, show a vast passive indifference to the excitement of the foreigners; they wait for it to go off, like the effervescence of soda-water. And gradually strange hesitations creep into the mind of the bewildered traveller; after a period of indignation, he begins to doubt all the maxims he has hitherto accepted without question. Is it really wise to be always guarding against future misfortune? Is it prudent to lose all enjoyment of the present through thinking of the disasters that may come at some future date? Should our lives be passed in building a mansion that we shall never have leisure to inhabit?The Chinese answer these questions in the negative, and therefore have to put up with poverty, disease, and anarchy. But, to compensate for these evils, they have retained, as industrial nations have not, the capacity for civilized enjoyment, for leisure and laughter, for pleasure in sunshine and philosophical discourse. The Chinese, of all classes, are more laughter-loving than any other race with which I am acquainted; they find amusement in everything, and a dispute can always be softened by a joke.I remember one hot day when a party of us were crossing the hills in chairs--the way was rough and very steep, the work for the coolies very severe. At the highest point of our journey, we stopped for ten minutes to let the men rest. Instantly they all sat in a row, brought out their pipes, and began to laugh among themselves as if they had not a care in the world. In any country that had learned the virtue of forethought, they would have devoted the moments to complaining of the heat, in order to increase their tip. We, being Europeans, spent the time worrying whether the automobile would be waiting for us at the right place. Well-to-do Chinese would have started a discussion as to whether the universe moves in cycles or progresses by a rectilinear motion; or they might have set to work to consider whether the truly virtuous man shows _complete_ self-abnegation, or may, on occasion, consider his own interest.One comes across white men occasionally who suffer under the delusion that China is not a civilized country. Such men have quite forgotten what constitutes civilization. It is true that there are no trams in Peking, and that the electric light is poor. It is true that there are places full of beauty, which Europeans itch to make hideous by digging up coal. It is true that the educated Chinaman is better at writing poetry than at remembering the sort of facts which can be looked up in _Whitaker's Almanac_. A European, in recommending a place of residence, will tell you that it has a good train service; the best quality he can conceive in any place is that it should be easy to get away from. But a Chinaman will tell you nothing about the trains; if you ask, he will tell you wrong. What he tells you is that there is a palace built by an ancient emperor, and a retreat in a lake for scholars weary of the world, founded by a famous poet of the Tang dynasty. It is this outlook that strikes the Westerner as barbaric.The Chinese, from the highest to the lowest, have an imperturbable quiet dignity, which is usually not destroyed even by a European education. They are not self-assertive, eitherindividually or nationally; their pride is too profound for self-assertion. They admit China's military weakness in comparison with foreign Powers, but they do not consider efficiency in homicide the most important quality in a man or a nation. I think that, at bottom, they almost all believe that China is the greatest nation in the world, and has the finest civilization. A Westerner cannot be expected to accept this view, because it is based on traditions utterly different from his own. But gradually one comes to feel that it is, at any rate, not an absurd view; that it is, in fact, the logical outcome of a self-consistent standard of values. The typical Westerner wishes to be the cause of as many changes as possible in his environment; the typical Chinaman wishes to enjoy as much and as delicately as possible. This difference is at the bottom of most of the contrast between China and the English-speaking world.We in the West make a fetish of "progress," which is the ethical camouflage of the desire to be the cause of changes. If we are asked, for instance, whether machinery has really improved the world, the question strikes us as foolish: it has brought great changes and therefore great "progress." What we believe to be a love of progress is really, in nine cases out of ten, a love of power, an enjoyment of the feeling that by our fiat we can make things different. For the sake of this pleasure, a young American will work so hard that, by the time he has acquired his millions, he has become a victim of dyspepsia, compelled to live on toast and water, and to be a mere spectator of the feasts that he offers to his guests. But he consoles himself with the thought that he can control politics, and provoke or prevent wars as may suit his investments. It is this temperament that makes Western nations "progressive."There are, of course, ambitious men in China, but they are less common than among ourselves. And their ambition takes a different form--not a better form, but one produced by the preference of enjoyment to power. It is a natural result of this preference that avarice is a widespread failing of the Chinese. Money brings the means of enjoyment, therefore money is passionately desired. With us, money is desired chiefly as a means to power; politicians, who can acquire power without much money, are often content to remain poor. In China, the _tuchuns_ (military governors), who have the real power, almost always use it for the sole purpose of amassing a fortune. Their object is to escape to Japan at a suitable moment; with sufficient plunder to enable them to enjoy life quietly for the rest of their days. The fact that in escaping they lose power does not trouble them in the least. It is, of course, obvious that suchpoliticians, who spread devastation only in the provinces committed to their care, are far less harmful to the world than our own, who ruin whole continents in order to win an election campaign.The corruption and anarchy in Chinese politics do much less harm than one would be inclined to expect. But for the predatory desires of the Great Powers--especially Japan--the harm would be much less than is done by our own "efficient" Governments. Nine-tenths of the activities of a modern Government are harmful; therefore the worse they are performed, the better. In China, where the Government is lazy, corrupt, and stupid, there is a degree of individual liberty which has been wholly lost in the rest of the world.The laws are just as bad as elsewhere; occasionally, under foreign pressure, a man is imprisoned for Bolshevist propaganda, just as he might be in England or America. But this is quite exceptional; as a rule, in practice, there is very little interference with free speech and a free Press.[96] The individual does not feel obliged to follow the herd, as he has in Europe since 1914, and in America since 1917. Men still think for themselves, and are not afraid to announce the conclusions at which they arrive. Individualism has perished in the West, but in China it survives, for good as well as for evil. Self-respect and personal dignity are possible for every coolie in China, to a degree which is, among ourselves, possible only for a few leading financiers.The business of "saving face," which often strikes foreigners in China as ludicrous, is only the carrying-out of respect for personal dignity in the sphere of social manners. Everybody has "face," even the humblest beggar; there are humiliations that you must not inflict upon him, if you are not to outrage the Chinese ethical code. If you speak to a Chinaman in a way that transgresses the code, he will laugh, because your words must be taken as spoken in jest if they are not to constitute an offence.Once I thought that the students to whom I was lecturing were not as industrious as they might be, and I told them so in just the same words that I should have used to English students in the same circumstances. But I soon found I was making a mistake. They all laughed uneasily, which surprised me until I saw the reason. Chinese life, even among the most modernized, is far more polite than anything to which we are accustomed. This, of course, interferes with efficiency, and also (what is more serious) with sincerity and truth in personal relations. If Iwere Chinese, I should wish to see it mitigated. But to those who suffer from the brutalities of the West, Chinese urbanity is very restful. Whether on the balance it is better or worse than our frankness, I shall not venture to decide.The Chinese remind one of the English in their love of compromise and in their habit of bowing to public opinion. Seldom is a conflict pushed to its ultimate brutal issue. The treatment of the Manchu Emperor may be taken as a case in point. When a Western country becomes a Republic, it is customary to cut off the head of the deposed monarch, or at least to cause him to fly the country. But the Chinese have left the Emperor his title, his beautiful palace, his troops of eunuchs, and an income of several million dollars a year. He is a boy of sixteen, living peaceably in the Forbidden City. Once, in the course of a civil war, he was nominally restored to power for a few days; but he was deposed again, without being in any way punished for the use to which he had been put.Public opinion is a very real force in China, when it can be roused. It was, by all accounts, mainly responsible for the downfall of the An Fu party in the summer of 1920. This party was pro-Japanese and was accepting loans from Japan. Hatred of Japan is the strongest and most widespread of political passions in China, and it was stirred up by the students in fiery orations. The An Fu party had, at first, a great preponderance of military strength; but their soldiers melted away when they came to understand the cause for which they were expected to fight. In the end, the opponents of the An Fu party were able to enter Peking and change the Government almost without firing a shot.The same influence of public opinion was decisive in the teachers' strike, which was on the point of being settled when I left Peking. The Government, which is always impecunious, owing to corruption, had left its teachers unpaid for many months. At last they struck to enforce payment, and went on a peaceful deputation to the Government, accompanied by many students. There was a clash with the soldiers and police, and many teachers and students were more or less severely wounded. This led to a terrific outcry, because the love of education in China is profound and widespread. The newspapers clamoured for revolution. The Government had just spent nine million dollars in corrupt payments to three Tuchuns who had descended upon the capital to extort blackmai l. It could not find any colourable pretext for refusing the few hundred thousands required by the teachers, and it capitulated in panic. I donot think there is any Anglo-Saxon country where the interests of teachers would have roused the same degree of public feeling.Nothing astonishes a European more in the Chinese than their patience. The educated Chinese are well aware of the foreign menace. They realize acutely what the Japanese have done in Manchuria and Shantung. They are aware that the English in Hong-Kong are doing their utmost to bring to naught the Canton attempt to introduce good government in the South. They know that all the Great Powers, without exception, look with greedy eyes upon the undeveloped resources of their country, especially its coal and iron. They have before them the example of Japan, which, by developing a brutal militarism, a cast-iron discipline, and a new reactionary religion, has succeeded in holding at bay the fierce lusts of "civilized" industrialists. Yet they neither copy Japan nor submit tamely to foreign domination. They think not in decades, but in centuries. They have been conquered before, first by the Tartars and then by the Manchus; but in both cases they absorbed their conquerors. Chinese civilization persisted, unchanged; and after a few generations the invaders became more Chinese than their subjects.Manchuria is a rather empty country, with abundant room for colonization. The Japanese assert that they need colonies for their surplus population, yet the Chinese immigrants into Manchuria exceed the Japanese a hundredfold. Whatever may be the temporary political status of Manchuria, it will remain a part of Chinese civilization, and can be recovered whenever Japan happens to be in difficulties. The Chinese derive such strength from their four hundred millions, the toughness of their national customs, their power of passive resistance, and their unrivalled national cohesiveness--in spite of the civil wars, which merely ruffle the surface--that they can afford to despise military methods, and to wait till the feverish energy of their oppressors shall have exhausted itself in internecine combats China is much less a political entity than a civilization--the only one that has survived from ancient times. Since the days of Confucius, the Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, Macedonian, and Roman Empires have perished; but China has persisted through a continuous evolution. There have been foreign influences--first Buddhism, and now Western science. But Buddhism did not turn the Chinese into Indians, and Western science will not turn them into Europeans. I have met men in China who knew as much of Western learning as any professor among ourselves; yet they had not been thrown off their balance, or lost touch withtheir own people. What is bad in the West--its brutality, its restlessness, its readiness to oppress the weak, its preoccupation with purely material aims--they see to be bad, and do not wish to adopt. What is good, especially its science, they do wish to adopt.The old indigenous culture of China has become rather dead; its art and literature are not what they were, and Confucius does not satisfy the spiritual needs of a modern man, even if he is Chinese. The Chinese who have had a European or American education realize that a new element, is needed to vitalize native traditions, and they look to our civilization to supply it. But they do not wish to construct a civilization just like ours; and it is precisely in this that the best hope lies. If they are not goaded into militarism, they may produce a genuinely new civilization, better than any that we in the West have been able to create.So far, I have spoken chiefly of the good sides of the Chinese characte r; but of course China, like every other nation, has its bad sides also. It is disagreeable to me to speak of these, as I experienced so much courtesy and real kindness from the Chinese, that I should prefer to say only nice things about them. But for the sake of China, as well as for the sake of truth, it would be a mistake to conceal what is less admirable. I will only ask the reader to remember that, on the balance, I think the Chinese one of the best nations I have come across, and am prepared to draw up a graver indictment against every one of the Great Powers. Shortly before I left China, an eminent Chinese writer pressed me to say what I considered the chief defects of the Chinese. With some reluctance, I mentioned three: avarice, cowardice and callousness. Strange to say, my interlocutor, instead of getting angry, admitted the justice of my criticism, and proceeded to discuss possible remedies. This is a sample of the intellectual integrity which is one of China's greatest virtues.The callousness of the Chinese is bound to strike every Anglo-Saxon. They have none of that humanitarian impulse which leads us to devote one per cent. of our energy to mitigating the evils wrought by the other ninety-nine per cent. For instance, we have been forbidding the Austrians to join with Germany, to emigrate, or to obtain the raw materials of industry. Therefore the Viennese have starved, except those whom it has pleased us to keep alive from philanthropy. The Chinese would not have had the energy to starve the Viennese, or the philanthropy to keep some of them alive. While I was in China, millions were dying of famine; men sold their children into slavery for a few dollars, and killed them if this sum wasunobtainable. Much was done by white men to relieve the famine, but very little by the Chinese, and that little vitiated by corruption. It must be said, however, that the efforts of the white men were more effective in soothing their own consciences than in helping the Chinese. So long as the present birth-rate and the present methods of agriculture persist, famines are bound to occur periodically; and those whom philanthropy keeps alive through one famine are only too likely to perish in the next.Famines in China can be permanently cured only by better methods of agriculture combined with emigration or birth-control on a large scale. Educated Chinese realize this, and it makes them indifferent to efforts to keep the present victims alive. A great deal of Chinese callousness has a similar explanation, and is due to perception of the vastness of the problems involved. But there remains a residue which cannot be so explained. If a dog is run over by an automobile and seriously hurt, nine out of ten passers-by will stop to laugh at the poor brute's howls. The spectacle of suffering does not of itself rouse any sympathetic pain in the average Chinaman; in fact, he seems to find it mildly agreeable. Their history, and their penal code before the revolution of 1911, show that they are by no means destitute of the impulse of active cruelty; but of this I did not myself come across any instances. And it must be said that active cruelty is practised by all the great nations, to an extent concealed from us only by our hypocrisy.Cowardice is prima facie a fault of the Chinese; but I am not sure that they are really lacking in courage. It is true that, in battles between rival tuchuns, both sides run away, and victory rests with the side that first discovers the flight of the other. But this proves only that the Chinese soldier is a rational man. No cause of any importance is involved, and the armies consist of mere mercenaries. When there is a serious issue, as, for instance, in the Tai-Ping rebellion, the Chinese are said to fight well, particularly if they have good officers. Nevertheless, I do not think that, in comparison with the Anglo-Saxons, the French, or the Germans, the Chinese can be considered a courageous people, except in the matter of passive endurance. They will endure torture, and even death, for motives which men of more pugnacious races would find insufficient--for example, to conceal the hiding-place of stolen plunder. In spite of their comparative lack of _active_ courage, they have less fear of death than we have, as is shown by their readiness to commit suicide.Avarice is, I should say, the gravest defect of the Chinese. Life is hard, and money is not easily obtained. For the sake of money, all except a very few foreign-educated Chinese will be guilty of corruption. For the sake of a few pence, almost any coolie will run an imminent risk of death. The difficulty of combating Japan has arisen mainly from the fact that hardly any Chinese politician can resist Japanese bribes. I think this defect is probably due to the fact that, for many ages, an honest living has been hard to get; in which case it will be lessened as economic conditions improve. I doubt if it is any worse now in China than it was in Europe in the eighteenth century. I have not heard of any Chinese general more corrupt than Marlborough, or of any politician more corrupt than Cardinal Dubois. It is, therefore, quite likely that changed industrial conditions will make the Chinese as honest as we are--which is not saying much.I have been speaking of the Chinese as they are in ordinary life, when they appear as men of active and sceptical intelligence, but of somewhat sluggish passions. There is, however, another side to them: they are capable of wild excitement, often of a collective kind. I saw little of this myself, but there can be no doubt of the fact. The Boxer rising was a case in point, and one which particularly affected Europeans. But their history is full of more or less analogous disturbances. It is this element in their character that makes them incalculable, and makes it impossible even to guess at their future. One can imagine a section of them becoming fanatically Bolshevist, or anti-Japanese, or Christian, or devoted to some leader who would ultimately declare himself Emperor. I suppose it is this element in their character that makes them, in spite of their habitual caution, the most reckless gamblers in the world. And many emperors have lost their thrones through the force of romantic love, although romantic love is far more despised than it is in the West.To sum up the Chinese character is not easy. Much of what strikes the foreigner is due merely to the fact that they have preserved an ancient civilization which is not industrial. All this is likely to pass away, under the pressure of the Japanese, and of European and American financiers. Their art is already perishing, and being replaced by crude imitations of second-rate European pictures. Most of the Chinese who have had a European education are quite incapable of seeing any beauty in native painting, and merely observe contemptuouslythat it does not obey the laws of perspective。
Chinese Character(《汉字》英文版)简介
Chinese Character（《汉字》英文版）简介作者：冯志伟来源：《华文教学与研究》2018年第01期[关键词] 汉字；六书；部件；笔划；树形图分析法[摘要] 介绍了Chinece Characters（《汉字》英文版）一书的主要内容和特色。
该书论述了汉字的起源、演变和结构，分析了现代汉字的部件和笔划。
[中图分类号]H02； H12 [文献标识码]A [文章编号]1674-8174（2017）03-0088-02外语教学与研究出版社在2017年3月出版了冯志伟和詹宏伟合著的Chinese Characters （《汉字》英文版）一书，笔者作为该书的作者之一，在此对这本用英文写的关于汉字的书，向国际汉语教学界作一个简明的介绍。
1. 引言文字是文化的重要组成部分，是极为珍贵的文化宝库。
书写符号是文化的载体，是人类智慧的结晶，是人类文明的精华，是照耀人类进步的灿烂明珠。
通过书面文字进行交际的能力是人类最值得关注的独有的能力。
目前，越来越多的外国学者和友人对中华文化和它的载体（汉字）产生了浓厚的兴趣，希望更全面、更深入地了解汉字，在汉语的国际教育中，正在学习汉语和将要学习汉语的学生们也希望了解汉字。
该书用英文来介绍汉字的演变与结构的基本知识，希望有助于他们通过英文来了解汉字和中华文化，推动国际间的交流和对话。
对于正在用英文讲授汉字的华文教师，该书也是一本方便实用的教学参考。
2. 全书主要内容该书共10章，222页。
第1章讲述汉字的起源，介绍了汉字的萌芽形式（新石器时代的刻符）和汉字的雏形（陶器上的陶符），说明了文字符号和非文字符号之间的差别。
第2章讲述汉字形体的历史演变，分别介绍了甲骨文、金文、大篆、小篆、隶书、草书、楷书、行书的性质和特点。
第3至8章分别讲述汉字的六书，除了论述六书的理论之外，还列举了一些有代表性的汉字，就它们的构形原理举例进行了分析。
对于大多数的汉字例子，都给出了它们的甲骨文、金文和小篆的字形；不过，对于学术界尚未定論的某些字形，为慎重起见，只好暂付阙如。
汉字 Chinese Characters
汉字汉字(Chinese characters)是世界上最古老的文字之一，也是使用者最多的文字。
汉字多达6万个，但常用的基本汉字只有6000个左右。
据权威专家估计，汉字有5000多年的历史，最初源于记录事情的图片。
从古至今，从甲骨文(Jiaguwen)到我们书写用的楷体(Kaiti)，汉字的形式和结构发生了很大改变。
历史上，汉字被朝鲜、日本、越南等过借鉴，因此也促进了国际交流。
在现代，中国人民用各种方法将汉字输入电脑，进行信息处理。
事实证明，汉字充满了生机与活力。
The Chinese characters are one of the oldest characters in the world, and are used by the most users. Chinese characters are up to 60,000, but only about 6,000 basic ones are often used. As authorities estimate, Chinese characters have a history of over 5,000 years, and they originate from pictures for keeping records. From ancient to modern times, the forms and structures of Chinese characters have changed much, evolving from Jiaguwen (oracle bone script), to Kaiti (regular script) we use now. In history, Chinese characters were borrowed by Korea, Japan and Vietnam, thereby improving international communication. In modern times, Chinese people have by many means solved the problem of inputting Chinese characters into computers to serve information processing. It has been borne out that Chinese characters are full of vigorand vitality.汉字 Chinese Characters汉字是世界上最古老的文字之一，也是世界上使用人数最多的文字。
TheChineseCharacter中国人的性格
The-Chinese-Character中国人的性格The Chinese Characterby Bertrand RussellThere is a theory among Occidentals that the Chinaman is inscrutable, full of secret thoughts, and impossible for us to understand. It may be that a greater experience of China would have brought me to share this opinion; but I could see nothing to support it during the time when I was working in that country. I talked to the Chinese as I should have talked to English people, and they answered me much as English people would have answered a Chinese whom they considered educated and not wholly unintelligent. I do not believe in the myth of the "Subtle Oriental": I am convinced that in a game of mutual deception an Englishman or American can beat a Chinese nine times out of ten. But as many comparatively poor Chinese have dealings with rich white men, the game is often played only on one side. Then, no doubt, the white man is deceived and swindled; but not more than a Chinese mandarin would be in London.One of the most remarkable things about the Chinese is their power of securing the affection of foreigners. Almost all Europeans like China, both those who come only as tourists and those who live there for many years. In spite of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, I can recall hardly a single Englishman in the Far East who liked the Japanese as well as the Chinese. Those who have lived long among them tend to acquire their outlook and their standards. New arrivals are struck by obvious evils: the beggars, the terrible poverty, the prevalence of disease, the anarchy and corruption in politics. Every energetic Westerner feels at first a strong desire to reform these evils, and of course they ought to be reformed.But the Chinese, even those who are the victims of preventable misfortunes, show a vast passive indifference to the excitement of the foreigners; they wait for it to go off, like the effervescence of soda-water. And gradually strange hesitations creep into the mind of the bewildered traveller; after a period of indignation, he begins to doubt all the maxims he has hitherto accepted without question. Is it really wise to be always guarding against future misfortune? Is it prudent to lose all enjoyment of the present through thinking of the disasters that may come at some future date? Should our lives be passed in building a mansion that we shall never have leisure to inhabit?The Chinese answer these questions in the negative, and therefore have to put up with poverty, disease, and anarchy. But, to compensate for these evils, they have retained, as industrial nations have not, the capacity for civilized enjoyment, for leisure and laughter, for pleasure in sunshine and philosophical discourse. The Chinese, of all classes, are more laughter-loving than any other race with which I am acquainted; they find amusement in everything, and a dispute can always be softened by a joke.I remember one hot day when a party of us were crossing the hills in chairs--the way was rough and very steep, the work for the coolies very severe. At the highest point of our journey, we stopped for ten minutes to let the men rest. Instantly they all sat in a row, brought out their pipes, and began to laugh among themselves as if they had not a care in the world. In any country that had learned the virtue of forethought, they would have devoted the moments to complaining of the heat, in order to increase their tip. We, being Europeans, spent the time worrying whether the automobile would be waiting for us at the right place. Well-to-do Chinese would have started a discussion as to whether the universe moves in cycles or progresses by a rectilinear motion; or they might have set to work to consider whether the truly virtuous man shows _complete_ self-abnegation, or may, on occasion, consider his own interest.One comes across white men occasionally who suffer under the delusion that China is not a civilized country. Such men have quite forgotten what constitutes civilization. It is true that there are no trams in Peking, and that the electric light is poor. It is true that there are places full of beauty, which Europeans itch to make hideous by digging up coal. It is true that the educated Chinaman is better at writing poetry than at remembering the sort of facts which can be looked up in _Whitaker's Almanac_. A European, in recommending a place of residence, will tell you that it has a good train service; the best quality he can conceive in any place is that it should be easy to get away from. But a Chinaman will tell you nothing about the trains; if you ask, he will tell you wrong. What he tells you is that there is a palace built by an ancient emperor, and a retreat in a lake for scholars weary of the world, founded by a famous poet of the Tang dynasty. It is this outlook that strikes the Westerner as barbaric.The Chinese, from the highest to the lowest, have an imperturbable quiet dignity, which is usually not destroyed even by a European education. They are not self-assertive, eitherindividually or nationally; their pride is too profound for self-assertion. They admit China's military weakness in comparison with foreign Powers, but they do not consider efficiency in homicide the most important quality in a man or a nation. I think that, at bottom, they almost all believe that China is the greatest nation in the world, and has the finest civilization. A Westerner cannot be expected to accept this view, because it is based on traditions utterly different from his own. But gradually one comes to feel that it is, at any rate, not an absurd view; that it is, in fact, the logical outcome of a self-consistent standard of values. The typical Westerner wishes to be the cause of as many changes as possible in his environment; the typical Chinaman wishes to enjoy as much and as delicately as possible. This difference is at the bottom of most of the contrast between China and the English-speaking world.We in the West make a fetish of "progress," which is the ethical camouflage of the desire to be the cause of changes. If we are asked, for instance, whether machinery has really improved the world, the question strikes us as foolish: it has brought great changes and therefore great "progress." What we believe to be a love of progress is really, in nine cases out of ten, a love of power, an enjoyment of the feeling that by our fiat we can make things different. For the sake of this pleasure, a young American will work so hard that, by the time he has acquired his millions, he has become a victim of dyspepsia, compelled to live on toast and water, and to be a mere spectator of the feasts that he offers to his guests. But he consoles himself with the thought that he can control politics, and provoke or prevent wars as may suit his investments. It is this temperament that makes Western nations "progressive."There are, of course, ambitious men in China, but they are less common than among ourselves. And their ambition takes a different form--not a better form, but one produced by the preference of enjoyment to power. It is a natural result of this preference that avarice is a widespread failing of the Chinese. Money brings the means of enjoyment, therefore money is passionately desired. With us, money is desired chiefly as a means to power; politicians, who can acquire power without much money, are often content to remain poor. In China, the _tuchuns_ (military governors), who have the real power, almost always use it for the sole purpose of amassing a fortune. Their object is to escape to Japan at a suitable moment; with sufficient plunder to enable them to enjoy life quietly for the rest of their days. The fact that in escaping they lose power does not trouble them in the least. It is, of course, obvious that suchpoliticians, who spread devastation only in the provinces committed to their care, are far less harmful to the world than our own, who ruin whole continents in order to win an election campaign.The corruption and anarchy in Chinese politics do much less harm than one would be inclined to expect. But for the predatory desires of the Great Powers--especially Japan--the harm would be much less than is done by our own "efficient" Governments. Nine-tenths of the activities of a modern Government are harmful; therefore the worse they are performed, the better. In China, where the Government is lazy, corrupt, and stupid, there is a degree of individual liberty which has been wholly lost in the rest of the world.The laws are just as bad as elsewhere; occasionally, under foreign pressure, a man is imprisoned for Bolshevist propaganda, just as he might be in England or America. But this is quite exceptional; as a rule, in practice, there is very little interference with free speech and a free Press.[96] The individual does not feel obliged to follow the herd, as he has in Europe since 1914, and in America since 1917. Men still think for themselves, and are not afraid to announce the conclusions at which they arrive. Individualism has perished in the West, but in China it survives, for good as well as for evil. Self-respect and personal dignity are possible for every coolie in China, to a degree which is, among ourselves, possible only for a few leading financiers.The business of "saving face," which often strikes foreigners in China as ludicrous, is only the carrying-out of respect for personal dignity in the sphere of social manners. Everybody has "face," even the humblest beggar; there are humiliations that you must not inflict upon him, if you are not to outrage the Chinese ethical code. If you speak to a Chinaman in a way that transgresses the code, he will laugh, because your words must be taken as spoken in jest if they are not to constitute an offence.Once I thought that the students to whom I was lecturing were not as industrious as they might be, and I told them so in just the same words that I should have used to English students in the same circumstances. But I soon found I was making a mistake. They all laughed uneasily, which surprised me until I saw the reason. Chinese life, even among the most modernized, is far more polite than anything to which we are accustomed. This, of course, interferes with efficiency, and also (what is more serious) with sincerity and truth in personal relations. If Iwere Chinese, I should wish to see it mitigated. But to those who suffer from the brutalities of the West, Chinese urbanity is very restful. Whether on the balance it is better or worse than our frankness, I shall not venture to decide.The Chinese remind one of the English in their love of compromise and in their habit of bowing to public opinion. Seldom is a conflict pushed to its ultimate brutal issue. The treatment of the Manchu Emperor may be taken as a case in point. When a Western country becomes a Republic, it is customary to cut off the head of the deposed monarch, or at least to cause him to fly the country. But the Chinese have left the Emperor his title, his beautiful palace, his troops of eunuchs, and an income of several million dollars a year. He is a boy of sixteen, living peaceably in the Forbidden City. Once, in the course of a civil war, he was nominally restored to power for a few days; but he was deposed again, without being in any way punished for the use to which he had been put.Public opinion is a very real force in China, when it can be roused. It was, by all accounts, mainly responsible for the downfall of the An Fu party in the summer of 1920. This party was pro-Japanese and was accepting loans from Japan. Hatred of Japan is the strongest and most widespread of political passions in China, and it was stirred up by the students in fiery orations. The An Fu party had, at first, a great preponderance of military strength; but their soldiers melted away when they came to understand the cause for which they were expected to fight. In the end, the opponents of the An Fu party were able to enter Peking and change the Government almost without firing a shot.The same influence of public opinion was decisive in the teachers' strike, which was on the point of being settled when I left Peking. The Government, which is always impecunious, owing to corruption, had left its teachers unpaid for many months. At last they struck to enforce payment, and went on a peaceful deputation to the Government, accompanied by many students. There was a clash with the soldiers and police, and many teachers and students were more or less severely wounded. This led to a terrific outcry, because the love of education in China is profound and widespread. The newspapers clamoured for revolution. The Government had just spent nine million dollars in corrupt payments to three Tuchuns who had descended upon the capital to extort blackmai l. It could not find any colourable pretext for refusing the few hundred thousands required by the teachers, and it capitulated in panic. I donot think there is any Anglo-Saxon country where the interests of teachers would have roused the same degree of public feeling.Nothing astonishes a European more in the Chinese than their patience. The educated Chinese are well aware of the foreign menace. They realize acutely what the Japanese have done in Manchuria and Shantung. They are aware that the English in Hong-Kong are doing their utmost to bring to naught the Canton attempt to introduce good government in the South. They know that all the Great Powers, without exception, look with greedy eyes upon the undeveloped resources of their country, especially its coal and iron. They have before them the example of Japan, which, by developing a brutal militarism, a cast-iron discipline, and a new reactionary religion, has succeeded in holding at bay the fierce lusts of "civilized" industrialists. Yet they neither copy Japan nor submit tamely to foreign domination. They think not in decades, but in centuries. They have been conquered before, first by the Tartars and then by the Manchus; but in both cases they absorbed their conquerors. Chinese civilization persisted, unchanged; and after a few generations the invaders became more Chinese than their subjects.Manchuria is a rather empty country, with abundant room for colonization. The Japanese assert that they need colonies for their surplus population, yet the Chinese immigrants into Manchuria exceed the Japanese a hundredfold. Whatever may be the temporary political status of Manchuria, it will remain a part of Chinese civilization, and can be recovered whenever Japan happens to be in difficulties. The Chinese derive such strength from their four hundred millions, the toughness of their national customs, their power of passive resistance, and their unrivalled national cohesiveness--in spite of the civil wars, which merely ruffle the surface--that they can afford to despise military methods, and to wait till the feverish energy of their oppressors shall have exhausted itself in internecine combats China is much less a political entity than a civilization--the only one that has survived from ancient times. Since the days of Confucius, the Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, Macedonian, and Roman Empires have perished; but China has persisted through a continuous evolution. There have been foreign influences--first Buddhism, and now Western science. But Buddhism did not turn the Chinese into Indians, and Western science will not turn them into Europeans. I have met men in China who knew as much of Western learning as any professor among ourselves; yet they had not been thrown off their balance, or lost touch withtheir own people. What is bad in the West--its brutality, its restlessness, its readiness to oppress the weak, its preoccupation with purely material aims--they see to be bad, and do not wish to adopt. What is good, especially its science, they do wish to adopt.The old indigenous culture of China has become rather dead; its art and literature are not what they were, and Confucius does not satisfy the spiritual needs of a modern man, even if he is Chinese. The Chinese who have had a European or American education realize that a new element, is needed to vitalize native traditions, and they look to our civilization to supply it. But they do not wish to construct a civilization just like ours; and it is precisely in this that the best hope lies. If they are not goaded into militarism, they may produce a genuinely new civilization, better than any that we in the West have been able to create.So far, I have spoken chiefly of the good sides of the Chinese characte r; but of course China, like every other nation, has its bad sides also. It is disagreeable to me to speak of these, as I experienced so much courtesy and real kindness from the Chinese, that I should prefer to say only nice things about them. But for the sake of China, as well as for the sake of truth, it would be a mistake to conceal what is less admirable. I will only ask the reader to remember that, on the balance, I think the Chinese one of the best nations I have come across, and am prepared to draw up a graver indictment against every one of the Great Powers. Shortly before I left China, an eminent Chinese writer pressed me to say what I considered the chief defects of the Chinese. With some reluctance, I mentioned three: avarice, cowardice and callousness. Strange to say, my interlocutor, instead of getting angry, admitted the justice of my criticism, and proceeded to discuss possible remedies. This is a sample of the intellectual integrity which is one of China's greatest virtues.The callousness of the Chinese is bound to strike every Anglo-Saxon. They have none of that humanitarian impulse which leads us to devote one per cent. of our energy to mitigating the evils wrought by the other ninety-nine per cent. For instance, we have been forbidding the Austrians to join with Germany, to emigrate, or to obtain the raw materials of industry. Therefore the Viennese have starved, except those whom it has pleased us to keep alive from philanthropy. The Chinese would not have had the energy to starve the Viennese, or the philanthropy to keep some of them alive. While I was in China, millions were dying of famine; men sold their children into slavery for a few dollars, and killed them if this sum wasunobtainable. Much was done by white men to relieve the famine, but very little by the Chinese, and that little vitiated by corruption. It must be said, however, that the efforts of the white men were more effective in soothing their own consciences than in helping the Chinese. So long as the present birth-rate and the present methods of agriculture persist, famines are bound to occur periodically; and those whom philanthropy keeps alive through one famine are only too likely to perish in the next.Famines in China can be permanently cured only by better methods of agriculture combined with emigration or birth-control on a large scale. Educated Chinese realize this, and it makes them indifferent to efforts to keep the present victims alive. A great deal of Chinese callousness has a similar explanation, and is due to perception of the vastness of the problems involved. But there remains a residue which cannot be so explained. If a dog is run over by an automobile and seriously hurt, nine out of ten passers-by will stop to laugh at the poor brute's howls. The spectacle of suffering does not of itself rouse any sympathetic pain in the average Chinaman; in fact, he seems to find it mildly agreeable. Their history, and their penal code before the revolution of 1911, show that they are by no means destitute of the impulse of active cruelty; but of this I did not myself come across any instances. And it must be said that active cruelty is practised by all the great nations, to an extent concealed from us only by our hypocrisy.Cowardice is prima facie a fault of the Chinese; but I am not sure that they are really lacking in courage. It is true that, in battles between rival tuchuns, both sides run away, and victory rests with the side that first discovers the flight of the other. But this proves only that the Chinese soldier is a rational man. No cause of any importance is involved, and the armies consist of mere mercenaries. When there is a serious issue, as, for instance, in the Tai-Ping rebellion, the Chinese are said to fight well, particularly if they have good officers. Nevertheless, I do not think that, in comparison with the Anglo-Saxons, the French, or the Germans, the Chinese can be considered a courageous people, except in the matter of passive endurance. They will endure torture, and even death, for motives which men of more pugnacious races would find insufficient--for example, to conceal the hiding-place of stolen plunder. In spite of their comparative lack of _active_ courage, they have less fear of death than we have, as is shown by their readiness to commit suicide.Avarice is, I should say, the gravest defect of the Chinese. Life is hard, and money is not easily obtained. For the sake of money, all except a very few foreign-educated Chinese will be guilty of corruption. For the sake of a few pence, almost any coolie will run an imminent risk of death. The difficulty of combating Japan has arisen mainly from the fact that hardly any Chinese politician can resist Japanese bribes. I think this defect is probably due to the fact that, for many ages, an honest living has been hard to get; in which case it will be lessened as economic conditions improve. I doubt if it is any worse now in China than it was in Europe in the eighteenth century. I have not heard of any Chinese general more corrupt than Marlborough, or of any politician more corrupt than Cardinal Dubois. It is, therefore, quite likely that changed industrial conditions will make the Chinese as honest as we are--which is not saying much.I have been speaking of the Chinese as they are in ordinary life, when they appear as men of active and sceptical intelligence, but of somewhat sluggish passions. There is, however, another side to them: they are capable of wild excitement, often of a collective kind. I saw little of this myself, but there can be no doubt of the fact. The Boxer rising was a case in point, and one which particularly affected Europeans. But their history is full of more or less analogous disturbances. It is this element in their character that makes them incalculable, and makes it impossible even to guess at their future. One can imagine a section of them becoming fanatically Bolshevist, or anti-Japanese, or Christian, or devoted to some leader who would ultimately declare himself Emperor. I suppose it is this element in their character that makes them, in spite of their habitual caution, the most reckless gamblers in the world. And many emperors have lost their thrones through the force of romantic love, although romantic love is far more despised than it is in the West.To sum up the Chinese character is not easy. Much of what strikes the foreigner is due merely to the fact that they have preserved an ancient civilization which is not industrial. All this is likely to pass away, under the pressure of the Japanese, and of European and American financiers. Their art is already perishing, and being replaced by crude imitations of second-rate European pictures. Most of the Chinese who have had a European education are quite incapable of seeing any beauty in native painting, and merely observe contemptuouslythat it does not obey the laws of perspective。
关于汉字的声音作文
关于汉字的声音作文英文回答：Chinese characters, also known as Hanzi, arefascinating and unique. They are not only a form of written communication but also carry the essence of Chinese culture and history. The pronunciation of Chinese characters is one aspect that makes them interesting.The pronunciation of Chinese characters can be quite challenging for non-native speakers. Unlike alphabetic languages like English, Chinese characters are not pronounced based on their individual letters. Instead, they are pronounced based on the combination of different sounds.For example, let's take the Chinese character "好"(hǎo) as an example. This character means "good" in English. The pronunciation of "好" is a combination of two sounds "h" and "ǎo". The "h" sound is similar to the English "h" sound, and the "ǎo" sound is similar to the"ow" sound in the English word "how". When the two sounds are combined, we get the pronunciation "hǎo".Another example is the Chinese character "爱" (ài), which means "love" in English. The pronunciation of "爱" is a combination of the sound "ài". The sound "ài" issimilar to the English word "eye" but with a shorter "i" sound at the end.Chinese characters also have different tones, which further add to the complexity of pronunciation. There are four tones in Mandarin Chinese flat, rising, falling then rising, and falling. The tone of a character can completely change its meaning.For example, let's take the Chinese character "妈" (mā) as an example. This character means "mother" in English.The pronunciation of "妈" is a flat tone, which means the pitch remains the same throughout the pronunciation.In contrast, the Chinese character "麻" (má) means "hemp" in English. The pronunciation of "麻" is a risingtone, which means the pitch rises as you pronounce the character.中文回答：汉字，也被称为汉字，非常有趣和独特。
中国汉字的特点英文作文
中国汉字的特点英文作文Chinese characters are known for their complexity and beauty. Each character is like a picture, representing a specific meaning or sound. They are a key part of Chinese culture and history, dating back thousands of years.One interesting aspect of Chinese characters is their stroke order. Each character is written with a specific sequence of strokes, which must be followed correctly in order to write the character accurately. This attention to detail and precision is a unique feature of Chinese writing.Another characteristic of Chinese characters is their versatility. A single character can have multiple meanings, depending on the context in which it is used. This can sometimes lead to confusion, but it also allows for a richness and depth of expression that is unique to Chinese writing.Chinese characters are also known for their visualappeal. The intricate strokes and patterns create a sense of artistry that is lacking in many other writing systems. Calligraphy, the art of writing characters with brush and ink, is a highly respected and admired skill in Chinese culture.Despite their complexity, Chinese characters are still widely used in modern times. They are used in written communication, signage, and even in digital media. The ability to read and write Chinese characters is considered a valuable skill, and many people around the world study them for this reason.In conclusion, Chinese characters are a fascinating and unique aspect of Chinese culture. Their complexity, beauty, and versatility make them a truly special form of writing. Learning to read and write Chinese characters is a challenging but rewarding experience that offers insight into the rich history and culture of China.。
外国人学汉字Chinese Character Reading and Writing 1
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Chinese Character Reading and Writing Ⅰ
• 10 New Character: 日月年木水火土田山石 • Reading and Writing • Useful Words • Practice
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火 huǒ: fire, get angry
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Words: 火车 huǒ chē: train 火锅 huǒ guō: hot pot 火焰 huǒ yàn: flame 火药 huǒ yào: gunpowder 发火 fā huǒ: get angry
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土 tǔ: soil, land, unfashionable
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Words: 土地 tǔ dì: soil, land 土豆 tǔ dòu: patato
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田tián: field, farmland
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Words: 年级 nián jí: grade 年龄 nián líng: age 年轻 nián qīng: young 新年 xīn nián: new year 每年 měi nián: every year
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木mù: wood, tree
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10 New Character:
日月年木水火土田山石
中国人的性格特点英语作文
中国人的性格特点英语作文Delving into the Enigmatic Essence of the Chinese CharacterThe intricate tapestry of the Chinese character has long captivated the global consciousness, evoking a myriad of perceptions and interpretations. As an outsider peeringinto the depths of this ancient civilization, one cannot help but be intrigued by the nuances and complexities that shape the Chinese persona. From the serene contemplation of Taoism to the pragmatic efficiency of Confucianism, the Chinese psyche is a kaleidoscope of seemingly paradoxical traits that defy simple categorization.At the heart of the Chinese character lies a profound respect for harmony and balance. This ethos, deeply rooted in the philosophical frameworks that have guided Chinese society for millennia, manifests in a preference for moderation and restraint. The Chinese often exhibit a remarkable ability to navigate the delicate interplay between seemingly opposing forces, harmonizing the yin and yang of life with a grace and fluidity that can appearenigmatic to the uninitiated.This harmonious disposition is further reinforced by a strong sense of collectivism that pervades the Chinese consciousness. The individual is often subsumed within the larger framework of the family, the community, and the nation, with a deep-seated understanding that one'spersonal interests are inextricably linked to the wellbeing of the collective. This collectivist orientation fosters a culture of interdependence, where personal achievement is celebrated not for its own sake, but for its contributionto the greater good.Intertwined with this collective spirit is a strong emphasis on hierarchy and social order. The Confucian principles of filial piety and respect for authority have shaped the Chinese psyche, instilling a reverence for tradition and a willingness to conform to established norms. This hierarchical mindset, however, is often tempered by a pragmatic flexibility that allows the Chinese to adapt to changing circumstances with remarkable agility.Beneath the surface of this societal order, the Chinese character also exhibits a deep-rooted resilience and perseverance. Forged through centuries of political turmoil, economic upheaval, and cultural transformations, the Chinese people have cultivated an unwavering tenacity that enables them to weather the storms of adversity with remarkable fortitude. This resilience is often manifestedin a stoic acceptance of hardship and a determination to overcome obstacles through sheer perseverance.Alongside this resilience, the Chinese character is also imbued with a rich tapestry of emotional depth and nuance. Beneath the seemingly impassive exterior, the Chinese often possess a profound emotional intelligence that allows themto navigate the complexities of interpersonal relationships with deftness and sensitivity. This emotional acumen isoften expressed through the subtle and indirect modes of communication that are deeply ingrained in Chinese culture, where the unspoken often holds as much, if not more, significance than the spoken word.Furthermore, the Chinese character is marked by a profoundreverence for education and intellectual pursuit. The enduring influence of Confucianism has instilled in the Chinese a deep-seated respect for knowledge and a tireless dedication to self-improvement. This intellectual curiosity and drive for excellence have fueled the remarkable advancements in science, technology, and the arts that have emerged from China, contributing to its global influence and impact.Yet, the Chinese character is not without its complexities and contradictions. Alongside the harmonious collectivism, there exists a powerful individualism that manifests in a fierce entrepreneurial spirit and a willingness to challenge the status quo. This juxtaposition of conformity and nonconformity, of tradition and innovation, is a testament to the richness and dynamism of the Chinese psyche.In conclusion, the Chinese character is a multifaceted and intricate tapestry, woven with threads of ancient wisdom, pragmatic adaptability, emotional depth, and intellectual prowess. As the world continues to grapple with the rise ofChina and its growing global influence, a deeper understanding of the Chinese character and its underlying complexities becomes increasingly crucial. By embracing the nuances and contradictions that define the Chinese persona, we can foster a more meaningful and inclusive dialogue, paving the way for greater cross-cultural understanding and collaboration in the years to come.。
The-Chinese-Character中国人的性格
The Chinese Characterby Bertrand RussellThere is a theory among Occidentals that the Chinaman is inscrutable, full of secret thoughts, and impossible for us to understand. It may be that a greater experience of China would have brought me to share this opinion; but I could see nothing to support it during the time when I was working in that country. I talked to the Chinese as I should have talked to English people, and they answered me much as English people would have answered a Chinese whom they considered educated and not wholly unintelligent. I do not believe in the myth of the "Subtle Oriental": I am convinced that in a game of mutual deception an Englishman or American can beat a Chinese nine times out of ten. But as many comparatively poor Chinese have dealings with rich white men, the game is often played only on one side. Then, no doubt, the white man is deceived and swindled; but not more than a Chinese mandarin would be in London.One of the most remarkable things about the Chinese is their power of securing the affection of foreigners. Almost all Europeans like China, both those who come only as tourists and those who live there for many years. In spite of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, I can recall hardly a single Englishman in the Far East who liked the Japanese as well as the Chinese. Those who have lived long among them tend to acquire their outlook and their standards. New arrivals are struck by obvious evils: the beggars, the terrible poverty, the prevalence of disease, the anarchy and corruption in politics. Every energetic Westerner feels at first a strong desire to reform these evils, and of course they ought to be reformed.But the Chinese, even those who are the victims of preventable misfortunes, show a vast passive indifference to the excitement of the foreigners; they wait for it to go off, like the effervescence of soda-water. And gradually strange hesitations creep into the mind of the bewildered traveller; after a period of indignation, he begins to doubt all the maxims he has hitherto accepted without question. Is it really wise to be always guarding against future misfortune? Is it prudent to lose all enjoyment ofthe present through thinking of the disasters that may come at some future date? Should our lives be passed in building a mansion that we shall never have leisure to inhabit?The Chinese answer these questions in the negative, and therefore have to put up with poverty, disease, and anarchy. But, to compensate for these evils, they have retained, as industrial nations have not, the capacity for civilized enjoyment, for leisure and laughter, for pleasure in sunshine and philosophical discourse. The Chinese, of all classes, are more laughter-loving than any other race with which I am acquainted; they find amusement in everything, and a dispute can always be softened by a joke.I remember one hot day when a party of us were crossing the hills in chairs--the way was rough and very steep, the work for the coolies very severe. At the highest point of our journey, we stopped for ten minutes to let the men rest. Instantly they all sat in a row, brought out their pipes, and began to laugh among themselves as if they had not a care in the world. In any country that had learned the virtue of forethought, they would have devoted the moments to complaining of the heat, in order to increase their tip. We, being Europeans, spent the time worrying whether the automobile would be waiting for us at the right place. Well-to-do Chinese would have started a discussion as to whether the universe moves in cycles or progresses by a rectilinear motion; or they might have set to work to consider whether the truly virtuous man shows _complete_ self-abnegation, or may, on occasion, consider his own interest.One comes across white men occasionally who suffer under the delusion that China is not a civilized country. Such men have quite forgotten what constitutes civilization. It is true that there are no trams in Peking, and that the electriclight is poor. It is true that there are places full of beauty, which Europeans itch to make hideous by digging up coal. It is true that the educated Chinaman is better at writing poetry than at remembering the sort of facts which can be looked up in_Whitaker's Almanac_. A European, in recommending a place of residence, will tell you that it has a good train service; the best quality he can conceive in any place isthat it should be easy to get away from. But a Chinaman will tell you nothing about the trains; if you ask, he will tell you wrong. What he tells you is that there is a palace built by an ancient emperor, and a retreat in a lake for scholars weary of the world, founded by a famous poet of the Tang dynasty. It is this outlook that strikes the Westerner as barbaric.The Chinese, from the highest to the lowest, have an imperturbable quiet dignity, which is usually not destroyed even by a European education. They are not self-assertive, either individually or nationally; their pride is too profound for self-assertion. They admit China's military weakness in comparison with foreign Powers, but they do not consider efficiency in homicide the most important quality in a man or a nation. I think that, at bottom, they almost all believe that China is the greatest nation in the world, and has the finest civilization. A Westerner cannot be expectedto accept this view, because it is based on traditions utterly different from his own. But gradually one comes to feel that it is, at any rate, not an absurd view; that it is, in fact, the logical outcome of a self-consistent standard of values. The typical Westerner wishes to be the cause of as many changes as possible in his environment; the typical Chinaman wishes to enjoy as much and as delicately as possible. This difference is at the bottom of most of the contrast between China and the English-speaking world.We in the West make a fetish of "progress," which is the ethical camouflage of the desire to be the cause of changes. If we are asked, for instance, whether machinery has really improved the world, the question strikes us as foolish: it has brought great changes and therefore great "progress." What we believe to be a love of progress is really, in nine cases out of ten, a love of power, an enjoyment of the feeling that by our fiat we can make things different. For the sake of this pleasure, a young American will work so hard that, by the time he has acquired his millions, he has become a victim of dyspepsia, compelled to live on toast and water, and to be a mere spectator of the feasts that he offers to his guests. But he consoles himselfwith the thought that he can control politics, and provoke or prevent wars as may suit his investments. It is this temperament that makes Western nations "progressive."There are, of course, ambitious men in China, but they are less common than among ourselves. And their ambition takes a different form--not a better form, but one produced by the preference of enjoyment to power. It is a natural result of this preference that avarice is a widespread failing of the Chinese. Money brings the means of enjoyment, therefore money is passionately desired. With us, money is desired chiefly as a means to power; politicians, who can acquire power without much money, are often content to remain poor. In China, the _tuchuns_ (military governors), who have the real power, almost always use it for the sole purpose of amassing a fortune. Their object is to escape to Japan at a suitable moment; with sufficient plunder to enable them to enjoy life quietly for the rest of their days. The fact that in escaping they lose power does not trouble them in the least. It is, of course, obvious that such politicians, who spread devastation only in the provinces committed to their care, are far less harmful to the world than our own, who ruin whole continents in order to win an election campaign.The corruption and anarchy in Chinese politics do much less harm than one would be inclined to expect. But for the predatory desires of the Great Powers--especially Japan--the harm would be much less than is done by our own "efficient" Governments. Nine-tenths of the activities of a modern Government are harmful; therefore the worse they are performed, the better. In China, where the Government is lazy, corrupt, and stupid, there is a degree of individual liberty which has been wholly lost in the rest of the world.The laws are just as bad as elsewhere; occasionally, under foreign pressure, a man is imprisoned for Bolshevist propaganda, just as he might be in England or America. But this is quite exceptional; as a rule, in practice, there is very little interference with free speech and a free Press.[96] The individual does not feel obliged to follow the herd, as he has in Europe since 1914, and in America since 1917. Men still think for themselves, and are not afraid to announce the conclusions at which they arrive. Individualism has perished in the West, but in China it survives, for good as well as for evil. Self-respect and personal dignity are possible for every coolie in China, to a degree which is, among ourselves, possible only for a fewleading financiers.The business of "saving face," which often strikes foreigners in China as ludicrous, is only the carrying-out of respect for personal dignity in the sphere of social manners. Everybody has "face," even the humblest beggar; there are humiliations that you must not inflict upon him, if you are not to outrage the Chinese ethical code. If you speak to a Chinaman in a way that transgresses the code, he will laugh, because your words must be taken as spoken in jest if they are not to constitute an offence.Once I thought that the students to whom I was lecturing were not as industrious as they might be, and I told them so in just the same words that I should have used to English students in the same circumstances. But I soon found I was making a mistake. They all laughed uneasily, which surprised me until I saw the reason. Chinese life, even among the most modernized, is far more polite than anything to which we are accustomed. This, of course, interferes with efficiency, and also (what is more serious) with sincerity and truth in personal relations. If I were Chinese, I should wish to see it mitigated. But to those who suffer from the brutalities of the West, Chinese urbanity is very restful. Whether on the balance it is better or worse than our frankness, I shall not venture to decide.The Chinese remind one of the English in their love of compromise and in their habit of bowing to public opinion. Seldom is a conflict pushed to its ultimate brutal issue. The treatment of the Manchu Emperor may be taken as a case in point. When a Western country becomes a Republic, it is customary to cut off the head of the deposed monarch, or at least to cause him to fly the country.But the Chinese have left the Emperor his title, his beautiful palace, his troops of eunuchs, and an income of several million dollars a year. He is a boy of sixteen, living peaceably in the Forbidden City. Once, in the course of a civil war, he was nominally restored to power for a few days; but he was deposed again, without being in any way punished for the use to which he had been put.Public opinion is a very real force in China, when it can be roused. It was, by all accounts, mainly responsible for the downfall of the An Fu party in the summer of1920. This party was pro-Japanese and was accepting loans from Japan. Hatred of Japan is the strongest and most widespread of political passions in China, and it wasstirred up by the students in fiery orations. The An Fu party had, at first, a great preponderance of military strength; but their soldiers melted away when they came to understand the cause for which they were expected to fight. In the end, the opponents of the An Fu party were able to enter Peking and change the Government almost without firing a shot.The same influence of public opinion was decisive in the teachers' strike, which was on the point of being settled when I left Peking. The Government, which is always impecunious, owing to corruption, had left its teachers unpaid for many months. Atlast they struck to enforce payment, and went on a peaceful deputation to the Government, accompanied by many students. There was a clash with the soldiers and police, and many teachers and students were more or less severely wounded. This led to a terrific outcry, because the love of education in China is profound and widespread. The newspapers clamoured for revolution. The Government had just spent nine million dollars in corrupt payments to three Tuchuns who had descended upon the capital etox tort blackmail. It could not find any colourable pretext for refusing the few hundred thousands required by the teachers, and it capitulated in panic. I do not think there is any Anglo-Saxon country where the interests of teachers would have roused the same degree of public feeling.Nothing astonishes a European more in the Chinese than their patience. The educated Chinese are well aware of the foreign menace. They realize acutely what the Japanese have done in Manchuria and Shantung. They are aware that the English in Hong-Kong are doing their utmost to bring to naught the Canton attempt to introduce good government in the South. They know that all the Great Powers, without exception, look with greedy eyes upon the undeveloped resources of their country, especially its coal and iron. They have before them the example of Japan, which, by developing a brutal militarism, a cast-iron discipline, and a new reactionary religion, has succeeded in holding at bay the fierce lusts of "civilized" industrialists. Yet they neither copy Japan nor submit tamely to foreign domination. They think not in decades, but incenturies. They have been conquered before, first by the Tartars and then by the Manchus; but in both cases they absorbed their conquerors. Chinese civilization persisted, unchanged; and after a few generations the invaders became more Chinese than their subjects.Manchuria is a rather empty country, with abundant room for colonization. The Japanese assert that they need colonies for their surplus population, yet the Chinese immigrants into Manchuria exceed the Japanesea hundredfold. Whatever may be the temporary political status of Manchuria, it will remain a part of Chinesecivilization, and can be recovered whenever Japan happens to be in difficulties. The Chinese derive such strength from their four hundred millions, the toughness of their national customs, their power of passive resistance, and their unrivalled national cohesiveness--in spite of the civil wars, which merely ruffle the surface--that they can afford to despise military methods, and to wait till the feverish energy of their oppressors shalhl ave exhausted itself in internecine combatsChina is much less a political entity than a civilization--the only one that has survived from ancient times. Since the days of Confucius, the Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, Macedonian, and Roman Empires have perished; but China has persisted through a continuous evolution. There have been foreign influences--first Buddhism, and now Western science. But Buddhism did not turn the Chinese into Indians, and Western science will not turn them into Europeans. I have met men in China who knew as much of Western learning as any professor among ourselves; yet they had not been thrown off their balance, or lost touch with their own people. What is bad in the West--its brutality, its restlessness, its readiness to oppress the weak, its preoccupation with purely material aims--they see to be bad, and do not wish to adopt. What is good, especially its science, they do wish to adopt.The old indigenous culture of China has become rather dead; its art andliterature are not what they were, and Confucius does not satisfy the spiritual needs of a modern man, even if he is Chinese. The Chinese who have had a European or American education realize that a new element, is needed to vitalize native traditions, and they look to our civilization to supply it. But they do not wish toconstruct a civilization just like ours; and it is precisely in this that the best hope lies. If they are not goaded into militarism, they may produce a genuinely new civilization, better than any that we in theWest have been able to create.So far, I have spoken chiefly of the good sides of the Chinese character; but of course China, like every other nation, has its bad sides also. It is disagreeable to me to speak of these, as I experienced so much courtesy and real kindness from the Chinese, that I should prefer to say only nice things about them. But for the sake of China, as well as for the sake of truth, it would be a mistake to conceal what is less admirable. I will only ask the reader to remember that, on the balance, I think the Chinese one of the best nations I have come across, and am prepared to draw up a graver indictment against every one of the Great Powers. Shortly before I left China, an eminent Chinese writer pressed me to say what I considered the chief defects of the Chinese. With some reluctance, I mentioned three: avarice, cowardice and callousness. Strange to say, my interlocutor, instead of getting angry, admitted the justice of my criticism, and proceeded to discuss possible remedies. This is a sample of the intellectual integrity which is one of China's greatest virtues.The callousness of the Chinese is bound to strike every Anglo-Saxon. They have none of that humanitarian impulse which leads us to devote one per cent. of our energy to mitigating the evils wrought by the other ninety-nine per cent. For instance, we have been forbidding the Austrians to join with Germany, to emigrate, or to obtain the raw materials of industry. Therefore the Viennese have starved, except those whom it has pleased us to keep alive from philanthropy. The Chinese would not have had the energy to starve the Viennese, or the philanthropy to keep some of them alive. While I was in China, millions were dying of famine; men sold their children into slavery for a few dollars, and killed them if this sum was unobtainable. Much was done by white men to relieve the famine, but very little by the Chinese, and that little vitiated by corruption. It must be said, however, that the efforts of the white men were more effective in soothing their own consciences than in helping the Chinese. So long as the present birth-rate and the present methods of agriculture persist, famines arebound to occur periodically; and those whom philanthropy keeps alive through one famine are only too likely to perish in the next.Famines in China can be permanently cured only by better methods of agriculture combined with emigration or birth-control on a large scale. Educated Chinese realize this, and it makes them indifferent to efforts to keep the present victims alive. A great deal of Chinese callousness has a similar explanation, and is due to perception of the vastness of the problems involved. But there remains a residue which cannot be so explained. If a dog is run over by an automobile and seriously hurt, nine out of ten passers-by will stop to laugh at the poor brute's howls. The spectacle ofsuffering does not of itself rouse any sympathetic pain in the average Chinaman; in fact, he seems to find it mildly agreeable. Their history, and their penal code before the revolution of 1911, show that they are by no means destitute of the impulse of active cruelty; but of this I did not myself come across any instances. And it must be said that active cruelty is practised by all the great nations, to an extent concealed from us only by our hypocrisy.Cowardice is prima facie a fault of the Chinese; but I am not sure that they are really lacking in courage. It is true that, in battles between rival tuchuns, both sides run away, and victory rests with the side that first discovers the flight of the other. But this proves only that the Chinese soldier is a rational man. No cause of any importance is involved, and the armies consist of mere mercenaries. When there is a serious issue, as, for instance, in the Tai-Ping rebellion, the Chinese are said to fight well, particularly if they have good officers. Nevertheless, I do not think that, in comparison with the Anglo-Saxons, the French, or the Germans, the Chinese can be considered a courageous people, except in the matter of passive endurance. Theywill endure torture, and even death, for motives which men of more pugnacious races would find insufficient--for example, to conceal the hiding-place of stolen plunder. In spite of their comparative lack of _active_ courage, they have less fear of death than we have, as is shown by their readiness to commit suicide.Avarice is, I should say, the gravest defect of the Chinese. Life is hard, and money is not easily obtained. For the sake of money, all except a very few foreign-educated Chinese will be guilty of corruption. For the sake of a few pence, almost any coolie will run an imminent risk of death. The difficulty of combating Japan has arisen mainly from the fact that hardly any Chinese politician can resist Japanese bribes. I think this defect is probably due to the fact that, for many ages, an honest living has been hard to get; in which case it will be lessened as economic conditions improve. I doubt if it is any worse now in China than it was in Europe in the eighteenth century. I have not heard of any Chinese general more corrupt than Marlborough, or of any politician more corrupt than Cardinal Dubois. It is, therefore, quite likely that changed industrial conditions will make the Chinese as honest as we are--which is not saying much.I have been speaking of the Chinese as they are in ordinary life, when they appear as men of active and sceptical intelligence, but of somewhat sluggish passions. There is, however, another side to them: they are capable of wild excitement, often of a collective kind. I saw little of this myself, but there can be no doubt of the fact. The Boxer rising was a case in point, and one which particularly affected Europeans. But their history is full of more or less analogous disturbances. It is this elementin their character that makes them incalculable, and makes it impossible even to guess at their future. One can imagine a section of them becoming fanatically Bolshevist, or anti-Japanese, or Christian, or devoted to some leader who would ultimately declare himself Emperor. I suppose it is this element in their character that makes them, in spite of their habitual caution, the most reckless gamblers in the world. And many emperors have lost their thrones through the force of romantic love, although romantic love is far more despised than it is in the West.To sum up the Chinese character is not easy. Much of what strikes the foreigner is due merely to the fact that they have preserved an ancient civilization which is not industrial. All this is likely to pass away, under the pressure of the Japanese, and of European and American financiers. Their art is already perishing, and being replaced by crude imitations of second-rate European pictures. Most of the Chinese who have had a European education are quite incapable of seeing any beauty in native painting, and merely observe contemptuously that it does not obey the laws ofperspecti。
Chinese Characters and Chinese Culture
§1.2 The Development of Chinese characters
From primitive times to present, Chinese characters haves strokes and font styles. Taking one with another, the evolution of font style is notable, for example, from complexity to simplicity, from pictograph to abstract symbol; and fixed several kinds of strokes step by step. From the Shang dynasty(1600-1060B.C) to the Wei & Jin dynasty(220439A.D) , Chinese characters underwent change in font styles in several stages, as follows:
§2 Some Properties of Chinese characters §2.1 Essentially, Chinese characters are ideograms
Compared with other character-system languages of the world, Chinese characters are essentially ideograms: Firstly, Chinese characters systematically correspond to semantic categories by means of their picto-components： every picto-component picto-components represents a meaning class. For example, the component “ 艹 (cǎo)” represents the meaning class of grass,“ 氵(sāndiǎnshuǐ)” represent that of water, “讠(yán)” represents speech, and so on. link.6.doc Secondly, Chinese characters record speech constituents and determine their meaning by combining different picto-components. For example, combining components “亻(dānrén) [human]” and “言(yán) [speak]” to show the meaning of the morpheme (sememe) “信(xìn)” [true, believe]; combining components “木(mù) [wood]” and “斤(jīn) [ax]” to show the sememe “析(xī)” [separate, divide]. etc.
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最中国的
汉 字 Chinese Characters
起源
仓颉造字说 结绳说 八卦说 河图洛书说 图画说
xiàng xí ng zì
象形字
Pictograms
zhǐ shì zì
Simple Ideograms
指示字
huì yì zì
Compound Ideograms
会意字
jiǎ
篆体 Seal script
隶书 Clerical script
草书和行书 Cursive and Semi-Cursive Script
楷书 Regular script
Nàng, "poor enunciation due to snuffle
窿
Biáng, a kind of noodle in Shaanxi
jiè
zì
假借字
Rebus
xíng shēng zì
Phono-semantic Cmpounds
形声字
zhuǎn zhù
zì
Transformed Cognates
转注字
演变
甲骨文 金文 小篆 隶书 楷书 草书 行书
甲骨文 Oracle bone script
金文（钟鼎文） Bronze Age: parallel script forms and gradual evolution
以前有位穷秀才，饥肠辘辘的来到咸阳，路过一家面馆时，要了一碗比 biangbiang面，结账时却身无分文，伙计不让他走。biangbiang面怎么写，秀才 问，伙计干瞪眼，秀才问：“我要是能写出来可否免单？”伙计心想，根本就没 这个字，就答应了 秀才边写边唱道：“一点飞上天，黄河两边弯，八字大张口，言字往里走，左 一扭，右一扭，西一长，东一长，中间加个马大王；心字底，月字旁，留个勾搭 挂麻糖，退了车车走咸阳