Tag: Handwriting

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Culture Experiences History Language Learning Technology

zhǐyǐn

zhǐyǐn (zhǐ·yǐn {(pointing with) finger → [pointing]} · guiding; leading 指引) 👈🏼 Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

[Notes: Tap/click on a Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) expression to reveal its “flashcard”; tap/click on a “flashcard” or its Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) expression to hide the “flashcard”. 📖 📄 📘 icons mean 📖 Reveal All, 📄 Reveal Advanced, and 📘 Reveal None re all the “flashcards” in the heading, paragraph, etc. that they are placed at the beginning of.]

Recently, I came across a video entitled “Margarita Königer: Glad I Chose This Career”. (This Watchtower article briefly discusses Sis. Königer’s experience coming into the truth, and her service up to about 1995. The video, which has a copyright date of 2016, is more up to date.)

Because of what I have seen and experienced in the Mandarin field for over three decades, what Sis. Königer said starting at about the 5:10 mark of the video really resonates with me:

English:

If you are in the full-time service, I think it’s like you are travelling and Jehovah is directing you.

Mandarin:

📖 📄 📘 Wǒmen (Wǒ·men we · [pl] 我们 我們) tóurù (tóu·rù {(if) throw} · {to enter} → [(if) participate in] 投入) quánshí (quán·shí full-·time 全时 全時) fúwù (fú·wù serving · {devoting (of oneself)} → [service] 服务 服務), jiù (then 就) hǎoxiàng (hǎo·xiàng (it) {well → [very much]} · {is like} 好像/象) shì ({(it) is (that)} 是) nǐ (you 你) zài ({are in} → [are now] 在) lǚxíng (travelling 旅行), ér (and 而) Yēhéhuá (Jehovah 耶和华 耶和華) yìzhí (yì·zhí one · {being straight} → [all the while] 一直) zhǐyǐn (zhǐ·yǐn {(is pointing with) finger → [is pointing]} · {is guiding} 指引) nǐ de ((nǐ you 你) (de ’s 的) → [your]) fāngxiàng (fāng·xiàng direction · {to be faced} 方向).

As can be seen above, this week’s MEotW, “zhǐyǐn (zhǐ·yǐn {(pointing with) finger → [pointing]} · guiding; leading 指引)”, is used in the Mandarin version of the above-mentioned video to correspond to the English word “directing”.

I have often felt like a fly on the wall observing Jehovah’s hand at work in the establishment and development of several Mandarin groups and congregations in my local area, and I have also seen much evidence that Jehovah has been directing things in the worldwide Mandarin field.

Photocopies and Handwriting

Specifically with regard to the development of material based on the organization’s official Chinese publications, but that includes Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) or Zhùyīn (Zhù·yīn {Annotating of} · Sounds → [Zhuyin] 注音 註/注音) to help Mandarin field language learners get past the imposing Great Wall of Chinese characters, I saw how things started in the 1980s or 1990s. Somewhere around that time, Chinese congregation elders on the West Coast of North America began directing teams of publishers who would make enlarged photocopies of official Chinese publications, and then painstakingly handwrite Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) or Zhùyīn (Zhù·yīn {Annotating of} · Sounds → [Zhuyin] 注音 註/注音) ruby text between the lines of characters. (In those days, many of the publishers involved were from Taiwan, where they were taught Zhùyīn (Zhù·yīn {Annotating of} · Sounds → [Zhuyin] 注音 註/注音) in school.) Photocopies would then be made of these handwritten “originals”, for distribution to hungry Mandarin field language learners at the local meetings and to be sent via snail mail, etc. to those in other places.

Photocopied and handwritten _Pīnyīn_ material from 1997, based on the book _The Secret of Family Happiness_

Photocopied and handwritten Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) material from 1997, based on the book The Secret of Family Happiness

PCs, Email, and Printers

A few years afterwards, in the early 2000s, I was serving where the need was great in the burgeoning Mandarin field in Calgary, where I was assigned by an unusually pragmatic and open-minded Chinese elder to develop similar Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音)-containing material for the local Mandarin field language learners—the brothers in Calgary at the time felt far from the West Coast, and had decided that they would be more comfortable with a local supply of such material.

Starting with a “clean sheet of paper” and using the personal computer technology that had become available and reasonably inexpensive at the time, I designed and started producing what was evidently the first material of the kind that eventually came to be commonly known as 3-line material. When the above-mentioned elder suggested adding English to the material that had up to this point only contained characters and Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音), I balked at first—it was already going to be so much work just to enter the characters and add the Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音)! However, I decided to make some prototype material that included English, and when one of the local brothers who was learning Mandarin saw a printout of it, his eyes seemed to pop out of his head, and he practically grabbed the printout out of my hands to get a closer look at it! That helped me to decide that the additional time and work needed for me to add the English translations would be a worthwhile investment that would greatly benefit the multiple people who would use the material.

Whereas the photocopied material mentioned above that was produced starting in the 1980s or 1990s was produced and distributed entirely in the paper realm, this new material was produced in the digital realm in word processing programs, and distributed as digital files (albeit ones still meant to be printed out on paper). Thus, I was able to email the files to whoever asked for them, after I emailed a few acquaintances I had in the nearby Canadian and American Mandarin fields about them.

A screenshot of early 3-line PDF material from 2001, based on the book _Is There a Creator Who Cares About You?_

A screenshot of early 3-line PDF material from 2001, based on the book Is There a Creator Who Cares About You?

And boy, did people start asking for them! Amazingly, people in the Mandarin field began telling their friends and fellow workers about the files, and I began to get emails from all around the world—from every continent except Antarctica—requesting them. I remember getting a bit emotional after getting an email from the UK requesting the files and telling me about the growing Chinese fields there—it felt like finding out about a part of your family that before, you had no idea existed. I also remember feeling amazed and doing a double take after seeing that I had gotten an email from someone in the Chinese group in Budapest, Hungary, where, by the way, it turns out that the Sis. Königer mentioned above served for a long time.

For those who weren’t around then, let me provide a bit more background information about the situation in the worldwide Mandarin field at the time, to help put this enthusiastic worldwide response in perspective. At the time, jw.org was still many years away from coming online and becoming a place on the web where one could just go and view or download abundant material based on official publications and containing Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音). This was also before the iPhone came out in 2007, before Android was introduced in 2008, and before the iPad came out in 2010. What many people in the worldwide Mandarin field did have at that time, though, were personal computers (PCs and Macs), email, printers, and an organizationally existentially urgent situation caused by the frustratingly complex and difficult-to-learn-and-remember Chinese characters, which can take years, even decades, for a language learner to get functionally proficient with.

Pinyin Material or Bust

Many of the Mandarin pregroups, groups, and congregations around the world at that time were quite new, with zero or very few publishers who were native Mandarin-speakers, and thus zero or very few people, especially brothers, who could function effectively in the Mandarin field with publications that contained only Chinese characters. So, they really, really needed material like that early 3-line material. Especially for many Mandarin pregroups and groups around the world at that time, getting the Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音)-containing material or not literally meant the difference between being able to conduct their Mandarin meetings or not being able to do so.

And so, email requests came pouring in from around the world for the early 3-line unofficial material that I was producing in my little rented basement suite in a territory far from the home where I grew up, with only a few occasional helpers. That was a hard time to go through—the material, while no longer having to be painstakingly handwritten, still took a lot of time and effort to produce, week after week, and many of those around me did not understand or appreciate this highly unusual, pressure-filled, high-stakes situation that I found myself in. During that time, I learned and lived the Mandarin saying “qí ({(if one) rides} 骑 騎)‐hǔ (tiger 虎)‐nán ({(it) is difficult} 难 難)‐xià ({to get down} 下)”. However, like Sis. Königer said, ultimately I could feel Jehovah directing things and helping me through it all.

3lines.org and Official Pinyin Resources

After about two and a half years in Calgary, difficulty in finding secular work caused me to move back to the city I grew up in, where, on reflection, the project in Calgary that produced that early 3-line material would probably never have gotten going, due to the relatively complacent acceptance of the status quo among the local relatively well-established Mandarin congregations. Eventually, I was invited to work with the international team of publishers that created and ran the 3lines.org website, and who began producing 3-line material on an industrial scale.

Meanwhile, on the official side of things, the organization eventually started to produce official printed versions of a few selected publications that contained Simplified Chinese characters with Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) ruby text. (I suppose the official team[s] involved decided that it was not worthwhile to include English translations, due to the tremendous extra ongoing investments in time, effort, and contributed funds that would be required to produce them on an ongoing basis to the quality level required of official material, which after all is primarily spiritual food, not language-learning material.)

Being printed on paper, though, these official Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) publications had to be physically printed and trucked/moved by rail/flown/literally shipped/etc. to the various Mandarin pregroups, groups, and congregations around the world that needed them. Generally these shipments would arrive in time for them to be used at the meetings in which they were scheduled to be used, but unfortunately, in spite of the best efforts of those involved, sometimes they would not—that was just the challenging nature at the time of producing and distributing paper publications on an ongoing tight schedule.

Over time, the organization got better at producing and delivering paper Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) publications on time, and it also eventually began to make digital versions of Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音)-containing material widely available for download. These developments, along with the massive efforts of others on the 3lines.org team, helped a lot, although there continued to be a lot of work for me to do in this regard as well.

Mobile Devices, the Web, and Linguistics

In the early-2010s, with the post-PC mobile revolution in full swing after the iPad was introduced and became “the most quickly adopted non-phone electronic product” ever, I found myself working on my iPhone/iPad app Pinyin Typist, and doing deep research on Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音), Chinese characters, and writing systems and linguistics in general. After all that I had gone through trying to learn characters and helping others to deal with the difficulties caused by characters, when I figured out from my research that actually, Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) is a good, workable writing system on its own for Mandarin and that characters are thus not a technical necessity, but rather, just an unusually deeply rooted cultural tradition, that was a mind-blowing moment for me.

To share the potentially game-changing things I had learned with my fellow Mandarin field language learners, I eventually wrote and posted articles including “Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Was Plan A”, which it seems many in the Mandarin field have read and benefitted from. Also, I eventually took the learnings from my experience in the Mandarin field and from my research into linguistics and into web and mobile technologies and began producing Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus material, a new generation of mobile-first, speech-first material for helping Mandarin field language learners deal with the Chinese characters they encounter in their ministry.

After a few years, in the late 2010s, as the official Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音)-containing resources became established, the unofficial team of publishers running 3lines.org was directed by the organization to fundamentally change their unofficial operation, resulting in that website scaling down drastically. However, even though I know the organization is aware of my activities—outside of 3lines.org—producing materials for Mandarin field language learners, I have not received any similar direction from it. So, I have continued doing what I can to provide resources for Mandarin field language learners, including several Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Plus resources (with deeply researched and extensive disclaimers about them not being spiritual food, but rather, Mandarin field language-learning resources) and this MEotW blog that you are now reading.

“It’s Like You Are Travelling and Jehovah Is Directing You”

Looking back now in 2025, it is evident that in spite of temporarily limited technology and the ongoing traditional cultural inertia and disdainful dismissiveness of those brainwashed by a world that glamourizes and practically idolizes Chinese characters, abundant official (and unofficial) Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音)-containing resources have become widely and easily available to Mandarin field language learners around the world. These precious resources help them to be able to powerfully and effectively glorify Jehovah and save lives in the vast worldwide Mandarin field without being egregiously obstructed by burdensome unnecessary difficulties imposed by human tradition.

Interestingly, in this regard, in the above-mentioned video (© 2016), starting at about the 4:35 mark, while describing her experience in the Mandarin field in Budapest, Hungary, Sis. Königer can be seen using one of the old bulky but beloved printed Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) New World Translation Bibles:

Screenshot showing part of a _Pīnyīn_ NWT Bible used by Sis. Margarita Königer

Screenshot of Sis. Margarita Königer using a _Pīnyīn_ NWT Bible

Also, starting at about the 4:43 mark, she and others can be seen using the old printed Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Sing to Jehovah songbook, which included musical notation:

Screenshot of Sis. Margarita Königer and others using _Pīnyīn_ _Sing to Jehovah_ songbooks with musical notation

Yes, in view of what I have witnessed and experienced in the Mandarin field, I heartily agree with Sis. Königer’s conclusion that she states starting at about the above video’s 5:10 mark, that ultimately, Jehovah directs the work of his faithful servants:

If you are in the full-time service, I think it’s like you are travelling and Jehovah is directing you. So I don’t worry. The responsibility is with Jehovah. I mean, we have to be faithful. That is our responsibility. But, what is happening is: Jehovah knows what he lets happen. It’s OK. And I hope everybody who is young, they will do the same because they will miss something, because it’s very satisfying. And working with Jehovah, you cannot compare it to anything else.

Categories
Culture Experiences History Technology

shūfǎ

shūfǎ (shū·fǎ writing · methods; ways → [calligraphy; penmanship] 书法 書法) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

Many know “shū (write | writing [→ [book | letter | document | style of calligraphy; script]] 书 書)” as the Mandarin word for “book”, but it actually has an old meaning of “write”. From “write” is derived “writing”, and from that, it’s easy to see how “shū (write | writing [→ [book | letter | document | style of calligraphy; script]] 书 書)” has come to have its modern meanings of “book”, “letter”, and “document”. For example, “shūxiě (shū·xiě write | writing 书写 書寫)” means “write” or “writing”, “Yǐsàiyàshū (Yǐsàiyà·shū Isaiah · {Writing → [Book]} 以赛亚书 以賽亞書)” is the Book of Isaiah, and a “qíngshū (qíng·shū {feelings; affection; emotion → [love]} · {writing → [letter]} 情书 情書)” is a love letter. Yet another effective meaning of “shū (write | writing [→ [book | letter | document | style of calligraphy; script]] 书 書)”, that can be derived from its meaning of “writing”, is “style of calligraphy”, or “script”.

The “fǎ (law | method; way; mode | standard; model | {magic arts} | {follow; model after} 法)” in “fāngfǎ (fāng·fǎ direction · method 方法)” can mean “methods; ways”, and when it’s combined with “shū (write | writing [→ [book | letter | document | style of calligraphy; script]] 书 書)”, we get this week’s MEotW, “shūfǎ (shū·fǎ writing · methods; ways → [calligraphy; penmanship] 书法 書法)”. This expression literally means “writing methods/ways”, and it is used to effectively mean “calligraphy”.

Eastern and Western Calligraphy

Calligraphy that involves the artistic writing of Chinese characters, as practised in Asian cultures, is well-known and highly esteemed. However, does calligraphy only exist in Asian cultures? Are beauty, artistry, and craftsmanship the exclusive province of Chinese characters? Is Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) only able to be cold, efficient, and artless, since it lacks the arguably self-indulgently complex visual designs of Chinese characters? No, no, and no! The fact is that there is a long history—and yes, tradition—of calligraphy involving the Latin alphabet, the alphabet that was deliberately chosen for Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) by the Chinese team that developed it.

This reminds us that while the Latin alphabet used by Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) may have originated outside of China, its adoption for use in Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) for writing Mandarin Chinese makes it part of Chinese culture. As the article “Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) Is a Good, Workable Writing System on Its Own” puts it:

While Pīnyīn uses the Latin alphabet, it does so because the Chinese developers of Pīnyīn of their own free will purposely chose to base it on this international alphabet (it’s not just the English alphabet) so that users of Pīnyīn would benefit from its familiarity. This Chinese design decision has caused the international Latin alphabet to be adopted as part of Chinese culture. As Zhōu Ēnlái (the first Premier of the People’s Republic of China) said, ‘When we adopt the Latin alphabet, in which we make necessary adjustments to suit the needs of the Chinese language, it becomes the phonetic alphabet of our language and is no longer the alphabet of ancient Latin, still less the alphabet of any foreign country.’

So, since Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) has both Eastern and Western aspects, Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) calligraphy would be both Eastern and Western calligraphy.

Calligraphy and Computer Fonts

In the modern world of computing, handwritten calligraphy has been augmented by computer fonts, which enable the billions of users of desktop and laptop computers and mobile devices to enjoy and benefit from the work of artists and designers who work with text and typography.

Incidentally, some of you may have noticed that there are way fewer fonts available for Chinese characters, compared to the overflowing cornucopia of fonts available for the Latin alphabet. This is undoubtedly yet another negative consequence of the simple fact that there are literally thousands of characters in common use that would have to be supported by any font for Chinese characters that’s intended to be usable in daily life, never mind the tens of thousands of Chinese characters that exist in total.

An interesting thing that some may not know is that calligraphy influenced the development of modern computer font design and technology. Steve Jobs, one of the founders of Apple, maker of the iPhone, the iPad, the Macintosh personal computer, etc., said the following in the Stanford Commencement address that he gave in 2005:

Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years later.

Time-Lapse Videos of Calligraphed MEotWs

Another way in which modern computing has augmented handwritten calligraphy is by supplying new tools for this ancient craft. A while ago, I acquired the app Procreate for my iPad, and more recently, I also bought an Apple Pencil on sale. As time allows, I hope to be able to put my old hobby of calligraphy to use, and use Procreate to create time-lapse videos, like the one near the beginning of this post, of certain MEotWs being hand-calligraphed. Hopefully these amateur efforts of mine will add a little artistry and craftsmanship for readers of this blog to enjoy.

The Truly Precious Things of All the Nations

The calligraphy produced of Chinese characters is a major aspect of what some fear would be lost if the hypothetical total replacement of characters with something as “mundane” as an alphabet were ever to take place. However, first of all, with how proud and stubborn worldly Chinese people are when it comes to their precious characters, there is little likelihood of that actually happening in the little time that this old system has left. (There’s probably just about as much likelihood that all the Catholics or all the Buddhists will come into the truth before the end comes!) As the MEotW post on “Yànwén (Yàn·wén {Proverb (Korean: Vernacular)} · Writing → [Hangul/Hankul (modern Korean writing system)] 谚文 諺文)” (the modern Korean writing system) said:

If Hangul took hundreds of years to become the dominant writing system in Korea, even with the added nationalistic motivation of it having been invented in Korea to be used instead of the characters invented in China, then Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) could take even longer to become the dominant writing system for Mandarin, if it ever does, and if this old system were hypothetically allowed to last that long—the supporters of invented-in-China Chinese characters are even more proudly and stubbornly resistant to the idea of changing away from Chinese characters in China itself.

At this rate, the current government of China, as long as it lasts, will probably never explicitly officially approve of using Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) as a full writing system for Mandarin in China, even if it’s just as an alternative to the characters instead of as a total replacement for them. Even if it actually wanted to do so, even this government would hesitate to approve of something like this that would probably be opposed by many of the people of China. (As a historic comparison, in 1977, the PRC promulgated a second round of simplified Chinese characters, but this was rescinded in 1986 following widespread opposition.)

The existence of much calligraphy based on the Latin alphabet that is used by Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) and many other writing systems reminds us that art and beauty do exist apart from Chinese characters. As for the precious things of China and Chinese culture, while humans may point to Chinese characters and the calligraphy based on them, what is truly precious about China in Jehovah God’s eyes? This quote from the September 2021 issue of The Watchtower reveals the answer as it discusses Haggai 2:7–9:

He tells us that as a result of the shaking, “the precious things [honesthearted people] of all the nations will come” to worship Jehovah.

Yes, to Jehovah God, the truly precious things of China are the honesthearted people in it, not the cultural products of any part of this old world that is passing away.—1 John 2:15–17.

While culture can definitely influence the people that are exposed to it, ultimately, people don’t come from culture. Rather, culture comes from people. So, let us focus on helping to save honesthearted Chinese people, not on trying to save the old world’s Chinese culture. Then, we will be able to enjoy the beautiful cultural products that these people will produce for eternity, as they live forever in paradise in God’s new system. Those cultural products will greatly surpass anything ever produced by this old world’s Chinese culture in its relatively brief (compared to eternity) and troubled existence, as the Chinese people who are able to live in the new system join the rest of God’s universal family in being “taught by Jehovah”. (Isaiah 54:13) As Haggai 2:9 says, “the future glory…will be greater than the former”.

Categories
Culture Language Learning Science Technology

tíbǐ‐wàng‐zì

tíbǐ (tí·bǐ {carry (hanging down from the hand) → [raise; lift]} · pen; pencil; {writing brush} [→ [start writing; write]] 提笔 提筆)‐wàng (forget 忘)‐zì (character 字) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

This week’s MEotW, “tíbǐ (tí·bǐ {carry (hanging down from the hand) → [raise; lift]} · pen; pencil; {writing brush} [→ [start writing; write]] 提笔 提筆)‐wàng (forget 忘)‐zì (character 字)”, is generally translated as “character amnesia”. Its literal meaning well describes what it’s like to experience it—you pick up your pen, pencil, brush, etc. to write a certain Chinese character and you…just…can’t…remember how to write it. This can happen with complex, rarely used characters, but it can also happen with fairly commonly used characters, and even with characters you’re sure you once knew well.

It occurs to me that while “tíbǐ (tí·bǐ {carry (hanging down from the hand) → [raise; lift]} · pen; pencil; {writing brush} [→ [start writing; write]] 提笔 提筆)‐wàng (forget 忘)‐zì (character 字)” literally refers to forgetting a character while trying to write it by hand, and while “character amnesia” is similarly defined as forgetting how to write certain characters, people also often forget characters—and thus fail to recognize them—when they are just reading. There doesn’t seem to be a corresponding common Mandarin expression for this, though, probably because it is generally harder to write than it is to read, and so forgetting a character while engaged in the harder task of writing is generally a more significant emotional event compared to forgetting a character when reading.

It Happens to Chinese People Too

It’s also worth noting that “tíbǐ (tí·bǐ {carry (hanging down from the hand) → [raise; lift]} · pen; pencil; {writing brush} [→ [start writing; write]] 提笔 提筆)‐wàng (forget 忘)‐zì (character 字)” is an expression that Chinese people do apply to themselves—it doesn’t just describe a problem that only other people experience while learning a language typically written with Chinese characters. Chinese people are also only human, so it is ultimately practically impossible for them too to learn and continue to remember how to write (or even “just” read) all the over 100,000 existing Chinese characters as well as the theoretically unlimited number of Chinese characters that could be invented in the future, even if they have spent, and are continuing to spend, their entire lives trying to do so.

While the government of China considers someone who can recognize “just” 2,000 characters to be literate, the truth is that even those who are considered literate by this standard can surprisingly often be unable to read or write relatively common characters that they once knew, never mind obscure characters that they never learned.

One example of even relatively highly literate native Mandarin speakers having trouble remembering how to write a not terribly uncommon character is related in David Moser’s well-known essay “Why Chinese Is So…Hard”, which has a section devoted to character amnesia:

this phonetic aspect of the language doesn’t really become very useful until you’ve learned a few hundred characters, and even when you’ve learned two thousand, the feeble phoneticity of Chinese will never provide you with the constant memory prod that the phonetic quality of English does.

Which means that often you just completely forget how to write a character. Period. If there is no obvious semantic clue in the radical, and no helpful phonetic component somewhere in the character, you’re just sunk. And you’re sunk whether your native language is Chinese or not; contrary to popular myth, Chinese people are not born with the ability to memorize arbitrary squiggles. In fact, one of the most gratifying experiences a foreign student of Chinese can have is to see a native speaker come up a complete blank when called upon to write the characters for some relatively common word. You feel an enormous sense of vindication and relief to see a native speaker experience the exact same difficulty you experience every day.

This is such a gratifying experience, in fact, that I have actually kept a list of characters that I have observed Chinese people forget how to write. (A sick, obsessive activity, I know.) I have seen highly literate Chinese people forget how to write certain characters in common words like “tin can”, “knee”, “screwdriver”, “snap” (as in “to snap one’s fingers”), “elbow”, “ginger”, “cushion”, “firecracker”, and so on. And when I say “forget”, I mean that they often cannot even put the first stroke down on the paper. Can you imagine a well-educated native English speaker totally forgetting how to write a word like “knee” or “tin can”? Or even a rarely-seen word like “scabbard” or “ragamuffin”? I was once at a luncheon with three Ph.D. students in the Chinese Department at Peking University, all native Chinese (one from Hong Kong). I happened to have a cold that day, and was trying to write a brief note to a friend canceling an appointment that day. I found that I couldn’t remember how to write the character 嚔, as in da penti 打喷嚔 “to sneeze”. I asked my three friends how to write the character, and to my surprise, all three of them simply shrugged in sheepish embarrassment. Not one of them could correctly produce the character. Now, Peking University is usually considered the “Harvard of China”. Can you imagine three Ph.D. students in English at Harvard forgetting how to write the English word “sneeze”?? Yet this state of affairs is by no means uncommon in China.

Truly, the phenomenon of tíbǐ (tí·bǐ {carry (hanging down from the hand) → [raise; lift]} · pen; pencil; {writing brush} [→ [start writing; write]] 提笔 提筆)‐wàng (forget 忘)‐zì (character 字) is nothing to sneeze at! (Sorry, I couldn’t help it 😜.)

Carrying on, this YouTube video from Asian Boss shows how some people on the streets of Shanghai fared when asked to write some Chinese characters. (One of the interviewees uses “tíbǐ (tí·bǐ {carry (hanging down from the hand) → [raise; lift]} · pen; pencil; {writing brush} [→ [start writing; write]] 提笔 提筆)‐wàng (forget 忘)‐zì (character 字)” at around 7:10.)

Relatively highly literate native Mandarin speakers can also have problems recognizing or remembering characters when “just” reading, as discussed in the tiandi.info blog post “An Avoidable Minefield of Human Tradition and Cultural Pride”:

A few nights ago, my Mandarin congregation had a Memorial meeting that went well overall. However, there was a momentary hiccup that I think we Chinese field publishers can learn from.

The speaker who gave the talk is a fluent, eloquent native Mandarin speaker originally from mainland China, and he is one of the best Mandarin speakers in a city of several Mandarin congregations. In fact, he was one of the instructors in the very first official Mandarin class ever held in this country. However, while reading a scripture from his paper Bible as he was giving the Memorial talk, he, of all people, just…got…stuck…on…a…Chinese…character…. He struggled with it for what felt like quite a while, and eventually, a young brother who was serving as an attendant at the side of the stage approached and gave him a hint, and he was able to carry on.

For Real, It’s Not You

Yes, from considering both the basic design of the Chinese characters writing system as well as real-life experiences like the ones related above, it is evident that the objective truth is that the Chinese characters writing system is by its very nature fundamentally unfit for human use. So, the blame for the all-too-real phenomenon of even relatively highly literate people surprisingly often forgetting characters while reading or writing should be squarely placed on the Chinese characters writing system, not on the imperfect humans whom it should serve, but for whom it so often causes huge problems instead.

It is thus unfortunate, not admirable, that many still cling to the problematic Chinese characters writing system because of tradition, pride, cultural inertia, apathy, inability to walk away from sunk costs, etc. Such ones simply accept tíbǐ (tí·bǐ {carry (hanging down from the hand) → [raise; lift]} · pen; pencil; {writing brush} [→ [start writing; write]] 提笔 提筆)‐wàng (forget 忘)‐zì (character 字) as “normal” rather than recognize it as the institutionalized inhuman madness that it is, while dismissing as madness and heresy any suggestion of using a human-appropriate alphabetic writing system like Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) to read and write Mandarin.

New Technology Is Not the Problem

Of course, these days, many people hardly ever write characters by hand anymore. Indeed, many would say that’s the problem! Instead of staying in practice with their handwriting, now, to write something in Mandarin using characters, people generally type Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) with a keyboard and then select the characters they want from the ones their computer or mobile device presents to them in response to their typing. (In such settings, Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) is like the assistant who does the real work while the big boss, the characters writing system, gets all the credit and recognition, even if many individual characters don’t get recognized when they need to be!)

However, is it really fair to blame the fine new technology for people getting out of practice with the old ways? Consider that if we were to continue with this line of thinking, we could then say that pen/pencil/brush/etc. and paper should in turn be villified for making people forget how to engrave stone tablets! Really, though, people in general got so used to enjoying the advantages of writing on paper compared to having to carve into stone tablets that they didn’t consider it much of a loss that eventually few were able to do the latter. Similarly, few people now lament that with the ubiquity of cars, not many people are now able to ride horses—most people are too busy enjoying their cars to worry about that.

Indeed, rather than blaming keyboards and computing devices for the phenomenon of tíbǐ (tí·bǐ {carry (hanging down from the hand) → [raise; lift]} · pen; pencil; {writing brush} [→ [start writing; write]] 提笔 提筆)‐wàng (forget 忘)‐zì (character 字), some feel that keyboards and computing devices have helped to alleviate the problem. This is because even if they tíbǐ (tí·bǐ {carry (hanging down from the hand) → [raise; lift]} · pen; pencil; {writing brush} [→ [start writing; write]] 提笔 提筆)‐wàng (forget 忘)‐zì (characters 字) when they are trying to type Chinese characters, they feel they can hope in and rely on the visual designs of the characters they want to help them “know them when they see them” when they pop up in response to the Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) that they type, making handwriting of characters unnecessary in most situations.

The Actual Problem, the Actual Solution

The thing is, the actual fundamental problem that leads to tíbǐ (tí·bǐ {carry (hanging down from the hand) → [raise; lift]} · pen; pencil; {writing brush} [→ [start writing; write]] 提笔 提筆)‐wàng (forget 忘)‐zì (character 字) is that while “know it when you see it” may be how the visually oriented characters must work (when they work), that’s not the primary way that human language works. With human language overall, speech is actually primary, not writing, so it’s really more important in the grand scheme of things for us—including and especially in our preaching and teaching work—to be able to “know it when we hear it”.

While using the unnecessarily complex and inhumanly numerous visually oriented Chinese characters for this is like trying to put a spiky, sharp-edged object in a round hole, the simple and elegant phonetically oriented Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) writing system is a great fit for “know it when you hear it”. If you know how an expression should sound and you know the easy-to-learn-and-remember Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) writing system, you’re all set—no danger of tíbǐ (tí·bǐ {carry (hanging down from the hand) → [raise; lift]} · pen; pencil; {writing brush} [→ [start writing; write]] 提笔 提筆)‐wàng (forget 忘)‐zì (character 字)!

Of course, you may still encounter occasional situations in which Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) is not an option, and you can’t avoid reading or writing characters. In such situations, all you can do is just do your best. When you can use Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音), though, don’t let pride, prejudice, etc. prevent you from making good use of it to completely sidestep the very real problem of tíbǐ (tí·bǐ {carry (hanging down from the hand) → [raise; lift]} · pen; pencil; {writing brush} [→ [start writing; write]] 提笔 提筆)‐wàng (forget 忘)‐zì (character 字)!