Chinese character standard

When people commented on how difficult it is to learn to write the Chinese characters, I can’t deny it. Even the Children in Asia often make mistakes while learning to write characters. Then, as now, a teacher’s only advice is to tell students to practice more by re-writing each character 10 or 20 more times.

A significant difference between English and Chinese is that Chinese is not alphabetic, so the writing is not related to its phonetics. Chinese characters evolved into a text by the graphics, sound, and meaning from their varied combinations. The features of the Chinese characters are: mono, single body, and square structure.

While discussing the history of the Chinese characters, I like to use “creation” while some people refer to their history in terms of “origin”. I prefer to think it term of the characters having been “created” to show respect for ancient sages of innovative thinking. The Chinese characters are representative of the significant accomplishments and contributions of ancient Chinese philosophers. The characters are not the product of random activity, but are representative of disciplined intellectual thought and design.

The development of the Chinese character evolved over three periods: First, by “Chang-jei” in Huang-di period, 2698-2598 BC; Second, with the first emperor of Qin dynasty who unified the text, 221-206 BC, and lastly, the contemporary writing system currently used by and taught to Chinese people.

It is generally accepted that Chang-jei created text, which is a founding point of the Chinese character, and, the origin of the Chinese characters in the history. Chang-jei advanced the interpretation and definition of the “text”, which is the standard of the Chinese characters. The character that do not follow the CJ standard cannot be called a Chinese character.

The Chinese character is a complex system, but formulated and unified by logical thought. For example, learning the character for ‘person’人(Rén), ‘big’ 大(dà), ‘sky’ 天(tiān), and ‘man/husband ‘夫(fu), we can further understand their meaning based on shape, combination, and relationship.

Chang-jei created text is the origin of Chinese language coordination. Again, the character that does not followed the CJ standard is not to be recognized as Chinese character. Because the CJ standard is more than just a symbol, it represents the development, evolution, and the unique history of China. When the emperor of Qin dynasty, Qin-Shi-Huang, unified the Chinese characters, he distinguished the event, time, space, and relationship of each character to reveal the CJ standard. This was a more significant event in Chinese history.