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120 Established in 1949, the logo for the All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF) 中华全国妇女联合会 (Zhōnghuá Quánguó Fùnǚ Liánhéhuì) represents an organization at the forefront of women’s rights within China. The “W” shapes come together to form an abstraction of the female radical (女) in its center. Surprisingly, the terrible word visually paralleled the triple “W” formation in the ACWF’s existing logo. Perhaps it is a coincidence, but I liken it to a subtle nod to this linguistic history.

121LANGUAGE, POLITICS, SEXISM I posted my project in the public space within RISD and invited a conversation. I wasn’t sure how people would respond to the work, or whether they would respond at all. Over the next two to three weeks, my poster had opened up a wide discussion among the Chinese student population and beyond. These next few pages document the responses I received. At some point, the responses pivoted from the actual poster, and more in conversation with each other. Some were critical of my work, some misunderstood it, but most were supportive. Viewed collectively, these comments captured a sliver of the critical world outside the classroom, one as polyphonous and contradictory as the Chinese language itself.

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136 censorship or natural Religion Bridge /ˈsensərSHip/ /ôr/ /ˈnaCH(ə)rəl/ noun See definitions in: All Technology Heraldry See definitions in: All Music 1. the suppression or prohibition of any parts Commerce Postal Military Cards Gambling Fishing Angling of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a conjunction adjective threat to security. \"the regulation imposes censorship on all media\" 1. used to link alternatives. \"a cup of tea or 1. existing in or caused by nature; not made coffee\" or caused by humankind. \"carrots contain a 2. (in ancient Rome) the office or position of natural antiseptic that fights bacteria\" (of censor. \"he celebrated a triumph together 2. introducing a synonym or explanation of a fabric) having a color characteristic of the with his father and they held the censorship preceding word or phrase. \"the espionage unbleached and undyed state; off-white. jointly\" novel, or, as it is known in the trade, the thriller\" 2. of or in agreement with the character or makeup of, or circumstances surrounding, 3. otherwise (used to introduce the someone or something. \"sharks have no consequences of something not being done natural enemies\" (of a person) born with a or not being the case). \"hurry up, or you'll particular skill, quality, or ability. (of a skill, miss it all\" quality, or ability) coming instinctively to a person; innate. \"writing appears to demand 4. introducing an afterthought, usually in the muscular movements that are not natural form of a question. \"John's indifference—or to children\" (of a person or their behavior) was it?—left her unsettled\" relaxed and unaffected; spontaneous.\" he replied with too much nonchalance to sound 5. either. \"to love is the one way to know or natural\" occurring as a matter of course God or man\" and without debate; inevitable. \"Ken was a natural choice for coach\" (of law or justice) noun based on innate moral sense; instinctively felt to be right and fair. \"you might feel that 6. a Boolean operator that gives the value one holding the teacher responsible for the if at least one operand (or input) has a value results contravenes natural justice\" of one, and otherwise has a value of zero. a circuit that gives an output signal if there is 3. (of a parent or child) related by blood. \"such a signal on any of its inputs. modifier noun: adopted children always knew who their OR; noun: OR gate; plural noun: OR gates natural parents were\" illegitimate. \"the Baron left a natural son by his mistress\" Phrases: or so—(after a quantity) approximately. \"a dozen or so people\" 4. (of a note) not sharped or flatted. \"the bassoon plays G-natural instead of A-flat\" (of suffix a brass instrument) having no valves and suffix: -or able to play only the notes of the harmonic series above a fundamental note. relating 1. (forming nouns) denoting a person or thing to the notes and intervals of the harmonic performing the action of a verb, or denoting series. another agent. \"escalator\" 5. relating to earthly or unredeemed human or 2. forming adjectives expressing a comparative physical nature as distinct from the spiritual sense. \"major\" or supernatural realm. 3. forming nouns denoting a state or condition. 6. (of a bid) straightforwardly reflecting one's \"error\" holding of cards. \"his bid of one heart was natural and positive\" abbreviation noun symbol: OR /ˈˌō ˈˌwär/ 1. a person regarded as having an innate gift or talent for a particular task or activity. \"she 1. operational research. was a natural for the sort of television work 2. Oregon (in official postal use). required of her\" a thing that is particularly 3. other ranks (as opposed to commissioned suited for something. \"perky musical accompaniment would seem a natural for officers). this series\" 2. a sign (♮) denoting a natural note when a previous sign or the key signature would otherwise demand a sharp or a flat. a natural note. any of the longer keys on a keyboard instrument that are normally white. 3. a creamy beige color. \"color for the summer is defined by the trend towards naturals\" 4. (in a gambling game) a combination or score that immediately wins. a hand of two cards making 21 in the first deal in blackjack and similar games. a first throw of 7 or 11 at craps. 5. an insect or other small creature used as bait, rather than an artificial imitation 6. a person born with a learning disability. adverb 1. naturally. \"keep walking—just act natural\"

evolution(?) Chemistry 137 /ˈbiɡətrē/ 3 See definitions in: All Biology Mathematics (Dated) noun 1. the process by which different kinds of living organisms are thought to have developed and diversified from earlier forms during the history of the earth. 2. the gradual development of something, especially from a simple to a more complex form. \"the forms of written languages undergo constant evolution\" 3. the giving off of a gaseous product, or of heat. \"the evolution of oxygen occurs rapidly in this process\" 4. a pattern of movements or maneuvers. \"silk ribbons waving in fanciful evolutions\" 5. the extraction of a root from a given quantity. Censorship or Natural Evolution? When a government forces a language to change and update, what is lost and what is gained?

138 愛 The Typographer, The Linguist, The Surgeon. Surveying the character on the operation table, they work decisively, dissecting the “heart” from the word “love”...

139CENSORSHIP OR NATURAL EVOLUTION? Following the 1949 civil war in mainland China, Mao ZeDong’s communists began to radically alter antiquity. In an effort to sever themselves from the humiliation of the past century, the Chinese government introduced a new, simplified writing system: 01-19-2017 One country, two systems Mao Zedong (who was Mao Tse-tung before pinyin, under the The Economist “Wade-Giles” romanisation system) wanted a radical break with old ways after 1949, when the civil war ended in mainland China. He was hardly the first to think that China’s beautiful, complicated and inefficient script was a hindrance to the country’s development. Lu Xun, a celebrated novelist, wrote in the early 20th century: “If we are to go on living, Chinese characters cannot.” But according to [Zhou Youguang, one of the inventors of pinyin], speaking to the New Yorker in 2004, it was Josef Stalin in 1949 who talked Mao out of full-scale romanisation, saying that a proud China needed a truly national system. Xu Bing The simplification of Chinese characters and the newly formed Book from the Sky romanized pronunciation, pinyin, allowed the barriers between 1988 the well-read upper class and illiterate proletarians to dissolve. Commenting on his experience of Characters within the Traditional Chinese form of words were watching the language he once knew eradicated making them easier to read, write, and print at change under the regime of Chairman small sizes. Pinyin, the romanization of Chinese, introduced a Mao, Xu Bing said \"It allowed me phonetic way of reading and learning Chinese, which, in turn, to see the changes in the Chinese standardized the language through spoken word and dissolved language and the style of Chinese all other dialects and spellings. As Mainland China started using characters. At that point I realized this new system, Hong Kong and Taiwan, which were not under the style of these characters actually communist control, continued to use Traditional Chinese. A split contained deeply political messages.\" within a once singular language emerged. (Brilliant Ideas Ep.15) The concept of simplifying language isn’t new, we see through history how pictographs and hieroglyphics change and morph into the alphabets we use today. Moreover, this section isn’t invested in the debate between Traditional or Simplified character sets. Rather, I want to consider how Simplified Chinese originated from the government rather than a natural development or progression of language.

14 0 George Orwell’s 1984 highlights how confined we are by language. The inhabitants of Oceania use Newspeak, a language 07-08-1949 simplified from English, washed out of any words that would Nineteen Eighty-Four inspire protest against the governing structure. In the limited George Orwell vocabulary of Newspeak, words lose their potential for various p.45-46 readings. For example, there is no “good” or “bad” only “good” and “ungood” or “doubleungood.” By making this change, “ungood” can only refer to being the opposite of “good” and nothing more. The black and white contrast created took away any emotion or feeling within words. “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. […] Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that. […] In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.” In a similar fashion, Simplified Chinese not only reduced the complexity of strokes, but also took away meaning from its words. Chinese is a pictographic language with bits of different characters combined together to form other characters. Sometimes, it gives hints to how the word is pronounced like in 妈 (mā) for “mom” which combines the radical for female / woman 女 (nǚ) and horse 马 (mǎ). Other times, it gives hints to the meaning or context of the character. The character for “love” 愛 (ài), in its traditional form, has the character for “heart” 心 (xīn) within it. The new simplified version, 爱, crosses out the space 心 occupied with a long horizontal bar. Other words like 後 (hòu) meaning \"after\" and 后 (hòu) meaning \"queen\" were reduced down to one character, both written as 后. When converting from Simplified back to Traditional, the context surrounding the word is needed to determine which form — 後 or 后 — is called for. Extrapolate these changes to thousands of other Chinese characters, and the historic and cultural loss is profound. A once vibrant and poetic language becomes cold and utilitarian, rendering the “range of consciousness...a little smaller.“ What is “love” without the “heart”?

141 CENSORSHIP OR NATURAL EVOLUTION? Greg Low From the structure of a character, one can see its true meaning. 2018 Because traditional Chinese writing is deeply embedded in Chinese culture, the way its characters are written represents 05-21-2017 morality and appropriate behavior. Why the Communist Party Chinese language scholar Jiao Guobiao thinks that by the Promotes Simplified Chinese Chinese Communist Party simplifying Chinese characters, it will Characters result in people losing the ability to recognize the true meaning Vision Times Staff and significance of Chinese characters. Zhang Tianliang, a visiting professor at George Mason University, stated: “If the connotation of the vocabulary is still there, those foreign words won’t cause conflict to the Chinese language; they are only communicative terms in people’s daily lives.” Zhang Tianliang added that the Chinese language has some “divinely inspired terms” related to the spiritual dimension, such as realm, enlightenment, etc., which carry the connotation of a divine culture. “Chinese people have a culture of communicating with God, a deep connotation of their origin, which stems from a high source.” Zhang Tianliang said that under the influence of Party culture, many Chinese words have mutated into something totally different from their original orthodox meanings. Additional opinions on how the shift from Traditional to Simplified may affect future of writing follows:

142 The Opinion Pages — Room for Debate A New York Times Blog 05-02-2009 The Chinese Language, Ever Evolving The Utopian Ideal in Writing Elitism vs. Populism Eileen Cheng-yin Chow associate professor of Chinese Eugene Wang professor of Asian art at Harvard University. literary and cultural studies at Harvard University. The utopian impulses behind standardization and Simplifying traditional Chinese characters was a simplification of a living language are always linguistic democratization and one of China’s most understandable. Increased literacy, administrative successful progressive programs in the 1950s. The efficiency, and ease of communication are laudable majority of the population was lifted out of illiteracy. goals. But those impulses can also strip a language Literacy had long remained a privilege and a of its wit, whimsy, and play, not to mention its source of power wielded by the elitist few. With capacity to accommodate new concepts and usages. the characters made easier to learn, the key to Traditional characters and simplified characters knowledge embedded in written texts was handed never were two separate and autonomous language to a wide population. systems — they have always existed on a continuum. A clash between traditional and simplified characters Many simplified characters are adaptations from comes down to elitism vs. populism. A recent poll common usage in Chinese cursive script; on the other conducted by Sohu.com on whether to reinstate hand, the inability to read traditional characters is the traditional characters shows that more netizens to close oneself off to much of the Chinese cultural oppose it. Behind the elitism/populism divide is the legacy — its history and arts — before the 1950s. opposition between an archaistic nostalgia toward Since I grew up in Taiwan, where reading and writing the illusory “purer” traditional Chinese literacy and a in traditional characters is the norm, simplified pragmatic and forward-looking modern drive. characters were a novelty and a bit of a challenge, Advocates for reinstating traditional characters and perhaps, something to be sniffed at. But when exaggerate the break of the simplified system from my first job after college led me to Beijing to work as the traditional orthography. Simplified characters a literary translator, I spent the first week furtively still retain the basic structure of traditional consulting a little manual of “Simplified/Traditional ideographs. The structural continuity makes the Character Conversion” before I became fully switch between them easy and smooth, a skill any comfortable with the new system, including learning educated person can quickly acquire. Many of the to write my name in a way that was comprehensible simplified characters had been in existence for more to desk clerks. The experience taught me the follies than a millennium. Manuscripts unearthed from of being a cultural purist. ancient tombs and medieval caves suggest that some Given the increasing flow of published and online simplified characters now used were already materials among the mainland China, Taiwan, and in currency then. The reform in the 1950s only the overseas Chinese diasporas, a literate reader officially legitimated these underground “outlaw” must have the ability to code-switch. Thus, the vernacular characters. answer is not either/or, but — annoyingly for policy [...] makers — both. It’s true that computer keyboarding has now made the dreaded writing of multi-stroke-characters mostly moot. But why require schoolchildren to spend time and cognitive energy learning overly complicated ideographs in this age of information explosion, so vastly different from traditional society? Why not let them acquire the simplified form first, and if they desire, move on to master traditional characters? The first step is for efficiency; the second is for cultural refinement. That is why every society has the division of labor between bankers and poets.

143CENSORSHIP OR NATURAL EVOLUTION? As part of the Communist Party’s campaign to reduce illiteracy, simplified characters were promoted as the common written language, replacing many traditional characters. We asked several experts to explain the roots of this shift, and how it might affect the future course of the written language. How a Computer Might Respond The Chinese Canon, Diminished Norman Matloff professor of computer science at the Hsuan Meng writes a column for World Journal Weekly. University of California, Davis, and author of KuaiXue, a Language is about cultural identity. This is especially software tool for learning Chinese. true in the case of the written Chinese language, which has evolved for at least three millenniums The original rationale for simplification was to and is now used by one and a half billion people accelerate the learning process. But is this necessary worldwide. Given the language’s long history, future today, given China’s much improved economic and Chinese readers and writers may have to live with social conditions? There may be no easy answer. the consequences of current decisions long after today’s powers and regimes have ceased to exist. What’s certain is that converting from the simplified The advantage of traditional characters is that they characters, or jiantizi, to the traditional characters, offer a stronger and richer connection with the history fantizi, would be a huge task, affecting everything of the Chinese language. The simplified writing system from school textbooks to government documents to has reduced the variety and changed the nature of online systems. Automation of that process would many character shapes, making it more difficult for present serious technical challenges. people to access classical texts in their full richness. This is more than an academic concern. Just as The trouble stems from fundamental differences Shakespeare’s plays and the language he used serve in the two character sets. The simplification as a foundation for the English language, so are process of the 1950s sometimes resulted in two the canonical writings of Confucius, Lao Tzu and different traditional characters becoming identical countless others who had exploited the full range in simplified form. For instance, the traditional and expression of the traditional characters. characters 發 (“develop”) and 髮 (“hair”) are both Proponents of simplified characters say that written as the simplified character, 发. When the simplified characters are easier to learn. But I software sees the latter, it must guess which of 發 have found no rigorous study that fully proves and 髮 is intended. Typically the guess is made by this. Moreover, some studies have shown that the analyzing context. Sometimes, the software can simplification process, by warping the shapes of produce the occasional howler. A passage describing characters, can cause confusion in the meaning “loss of face” might be translated by the computer as of characters. loss of 麵 (“noodles”) rather than loss of 面 (“face”)! In Taiwan and Hong Kong, schoolchildren have no So while most of the process could be automated, trouble learning traditional characters, and those especially with more fine tuning in the software, regions demonstrate some of the highest literacy much work would need to be done by hand as well. rates in the world. Meanwhile, in recent decades, the People’s Republic has implemented policies that implicitly acknowledge the practical, cultural and aesthetic values of traditional Chinese: some traditional characters have been restored to use, and the government permits traditional characters in the practice of calligraphy. The push to simplify Chinese reflects contemporary political agendas more than a desire for a good solution. We should find ways to promote coexistence of both systems of writing. This essay was translated from the Chinese by Victoria Meng.

14 4 Simplified Chinese, despite its origins, does have certain benefits in the modern age of printing and graphic design. Like dropping the period off of the end of the New York Times logo, the new Simplified writing system was efficient; saving on ink and money. Less character strokes meant less ink per character and greater legibility at smaller sizes without the word distorting into an unrecognizable ink blots. You may have noticed at the type size this book is designed in, some of the Traditional Characters I reference start looking more like dark grey squares than discernible words. It may strip away past culture, and is imbued with the politics of the communist party, but visually, the change has allowed the remaining strokes to breathe and feel less cluttered. The usage of Chinese characters is also changing rapidly. They now hold more meaning than what the historical, Traditional set may encompass. In efforts to thwart censors, Chinese netizens use homophonic, logographic, and allusionary codewords that give characters new connotations within the internet context, and a rapidly expanding alternative dictionary. 07-08-1949 It may seem like a convoluted system of doublespeak to some, but for Chinese netizens, this is the norm — and always has The Chinese Language as a been. Much of Chinese Internet lingo involves codewords, Weapon: How China’s Netizens and the corpus of codewords is constantly changing to Fight Censorship accommodate new topics and avoid smarter, stricter censors. It Jeanette Si has reached the point where a simple understanding of Chinese vocabulary, syntax, and grammar is no longer enough to fully understand Chinese Internet discourse. On today’s Chinese Internet, fully comprehending the language requires a thorough knowledge of current events, a deep respect for historical implications, an agile mastery of cultural conventions, and more often than not, a healthy appreciation of topical humor. When Chinese censors began to filter out posts for profanity, a rather strange term began floating around the Chinese Internet: “grass mud horse,” or “cǎonímǎ” (草泥馬). There is no real animal that is called a grass mud horse in Chinese, but these three characters were chosen for their sound, not their meaning. Taken together, they are a close homophone for an extremely obscene Chinese insult newly targeted by profanity censors. Homophones have now become a weapon of the resistance, a way for context-sensitive Chinese netizens to speak about taboo content. It remains one of the most popular methods for creating codewords, as almost any netizen with an ear for recent events can sound out the words and match them to a blocked keyword.

145 [...] CENSORSHIP OR NATURAL EVOLUTION? According to the New York Times, Chinese is one of the few remaining logographic languages \"The Grass-Mud Horse\" is a mythical still in wide use today, and the visual nature of the written creature whose name in Chinese sounds characters presents even more possibilities for Chinese netizens like \"fuck your mother\". These horses seeking to evade censors. Many characters appear very similar face a problem: invading river crabs to other characters, to the point where even native speakers that are devouring their grassland. In often mix up characters in writing. spoken Chinese, river crab sounds very much like harmony, which in Chinas Many codewords take advantage of these similarities and cyberspace has become a synonym for convey banned concepts with lookalike characters. This has the censorship. Censored bloggers often say added benefit of not triggering homophone censors, as many their posts have been harmonized — a times, these lookalike characters do not sound alike at all. In term directly derived from President Hu fact, it may be especially difficult for those out of the loop to Jintaos regular exhortations for Chinese pick up on the existence of these codewords without some citizens to create a harmonious society. contextual hints. While grass-mud horse sounds like a nasty curse in Chinese, its written [...] Chinese characters are completely different, and its meaning —taken Whether or not this means China’s Internet discourse will literally — is benign. Thus, the beast has become freer in the future, considering the current state dodged the Chinese governments efforts of affairs, is hard to say. But with a language so colorfully to censor information over the Internet versatile, steadily increasing Internet access, and only the that is seditious or inflammatory. world’s biggest population, the underground lexicon of China’s Xiao Qiang, an adjunct professor Internet still has much more room to grow and adapt to of journalism at the University of whatever situation the filters may throw at it next. California, Berkeley, said that the grass- mud horse is an icon of resistance to We don’t have to discard one system to use the other. Traditional censorship. Chinese can still have a place within Mainland China and vice versa. As rules and political tensions have relaxed, there are times when the aesthetic and utility of either or may be preferred in a large logo head, a small business card, or within calligraphic writing. There may be ways Traditional and Simplified can live harmoniously together, like different typeface styles, like Fraktur and Helvetica. We can appreciate both the expressive and economic between these two sets.

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147CENSORSHIP OR NATURAL EVOLUTION? title tbd ___ is a series of ceramic plates that explore the liminal spaces between Traditional and Simplified Chinese characters. __ explores the passage of time, lost history, nostalgia, and memory, a mourning for the aesthetic and poetic past but also a preservation for the current present. In the rush of modernization, what nuances are lost or added through this subtractive and additive process of “simplification”? How have values changed or altered? As the older traditional character covered and overlaid with slip and glaze, they start to dissolve and disappear, retaining only a faint inkling on the surface of the plate. The difference between the simplified form rendered in brush contrast with the traditional carved forms.

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