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Lǐ Huá

Lǐ ({Plum (surname)} 李)
Huá (Flower → [Magnificence; Glory; Splendour; Florescence | Best Part; Cream | Times; Years | China] | Flowery → [Magnificent; Splendid; Glorious; Florescent | Prosperous; Flourishing | Flashy; Extravagant | Chinese] 华 華) 👈🏼 Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

Citing national security concerns, the American government recently passed a law banning the popular social media app TikTok. Ironically (some would say hilariously), many American TikTok users, whom many are calling “TikTok refugees” (“TikTok nànmín (nàn·mín calamity · {persons of a certain occupation} → [refugees] 难民 難民)”), have defiantly responded in protest by migrating to an even more overtly Chinese social media app, Xiǎohóngshū (Xiǎo·hóng·shū Little · Red · Book → [a Chinese social networking platform, commonly known in English as RedNote] 小红书 小紅書) (also called RedNote), in such numbers (more than 700,000 in just two days) that Xiǎohóngshū (Xiǎo·hóng·shū Little · Red · Book → [a Chinese social networking platform, commonly known in English as RedNote] 小红书 小紅書) became the most-downloaded free app on Apple’s US App Store for a while.

On Xiǎohóngshū (Xiǎo·hóng·shū Little · Red · Book → [a Chinese social networking platform, commonly known in English as RedNote] 小红书 小紅書), many regular Chinese people have found it moving and rewarding to be able to make friends with regular American people, and vice versa. Many Americans have even expressed and shown interest in learning Mandarin to better connect with their new Chinese wǎngyǒu (wǎng·yǒu {net → [network] → [Internet]} · friends 网友 網/网友) (Internet friends).

With all this happening on Xiǎohóngshū (Xiǎo·hóng·shū Little · Red · Book → [a Chinese social networking platform, commonly known in English as RedNote] 小红书 小紅書), the topic of “Lǐ ({Plum (surname)} 李) Huá (Flower → [Magnificence; Glory; Splendour; Florescence | Best Part; Cream | Times; Years | China] | Flowery → [Magnificent; Splendid; Glorious; Florescent | Prosperous; Flourishing | Flashy; Extravagant | Chinese] 华 華)”, this week’s MEotW, has come up. This expression is a person’s name, with “Lǐ ({Plum (surname)} 李)”, which literally means “Plum”, being the surname, and a very common one at that. “Huá (Flower → [Magnificence; Glory; Splendour; Florescence | Best Part; Cream | Times; Years | China] | Flowery → [Magnificent; Splendid; Glorious; Florescent | Prosperous; Flourishing | Flashy; Extravagant | Chinese] 华 華)” is an interesting expression that is discussed in the MEotW post on “Huáyǔ (Huá·yǔ {Magnificent; Splendid; Flowery; Florescent → [Chinese]} · Language → [(Modern Standard) Mandarin (term commonly used in Singapore)] 华语 華語)”.

So, why are people on Xiǎohóngshū (Xiǎo·hóng·shū Little · Red · Book → [a Chinese social networking platform, commonly known in English as RedNote] 小红书 小紅書) talking about Lǐ ({Plum (surname)} 李) Huá (Flower → [Magnificence; Glory; Splendour; Florescence | Best Part; Cream | Times; Years | China] | Flowery → [Magnificent; Splendid; Glorious; Florescent | Prosperous; Flourishing | Flashy; Extravagant | Chinese] 华 華)?

Imaginary Pen Pals Magically Coming to Life

Here is a TikTok video containing this week’s MEotW, that explains how many Chinese Xiǎohóngshū (Xiǎo·hóng·shū Little · Red · Book → [a Chinese social networking platform, commonly known in English as RedNote] 小红书 小紅書) users feel about all the American people who have recently joined the app:

@jasmeizhang As a Chinese, what do we feel about foreigners joining RedNote? #tiktokrefugee #rednote #xiaohongshu #chinese ♬ original sound – jasmeizhang

(For any who cannot access this video, the gist is that when taking exams, students in China often encounter a question that asks them to assume the role of Lǐ ({Plum (surname)} 李) Huá (Flower → [Magnificence; Glory; Splendour; Florescence | Best Part; Cream | Times; Years | China] | Flowery → [Magnificent; Splendid; Glorious; Florescent | Prosperous; Flourishing | Flashy; Extravagant | Chinese] 华 華) and write a letter in English to an imaginary foreign pen pal, perhaps about Chinese cuisine or some other topic related to China. So, for many Chinese people, encountering so many Americans and their comments on Xiǎohóngshū (Xiǎo·hóng·shū Little · Red · Book → [a Chinese social networking platform, commonly known in English as RedNote] 小红书 小紅書) recently feels like the imaginary foreign pen pals they wrote to so many times over the years as Lǐ ({Plum (surname)} 李) Huá (Flower → [Magnificence; Glory; Splendour; Florescence | Best Part; Cream | Times; Years | China] | Flowery → [Magnificent; Splendid; Glorious; Florescent | Prosperous; Flourishing | Flashy; Extravagant | Chinese] 华 華) magically came to life and finally wrote back. She concludes by saying, “Thank you for coming over, trying to post in our language, talking to us, interacting with everyone. It makes us feel like we’re not alone in this world. After all, we’re all human, and deep down, humans are more alike than we’re different.”)

After a while, I was also able to find the same video on Xiǎohóngshū (Xiǎo·hóng·shū Little · Red · Book → [a Chinese social networking platform, commonly known in English as RedNote] 小红书 小紅書), so here it is coming from there, as a backup in case TikTok really ends up going away and not coming back for users in America or other places:

Here are some of the comments on TikTok in response to this video:

Many of us spent our childhoods “digging to China” in sandboxes, on beaches and in backyards. We were always meant to be friends, Li Hua. 🩵 so much love from all of us

Dear Li Hua, sorry we couldn’t write back sooner! Our bosses are kinda jerks. But we’re working on that! We’re all really happy to see your lives and pets and culture! Love, your American pen pal ❤️

Why am I crying so much at this story 🤧 I felt it would be disrespectful to invade your space but hearing this other side of things, I’m gonna join rednote now and start learning mandarin.

I’m learning mandarin on Duolingo. So far, I can only order hot water and soup. I’m so excited to one day be able to speak your language as beautifully as you speak mine. 🥲

Here is a video I found on Xiǎohóngshū (Xiǎo·hóng·shū Little · Red · Book → [a Chinese social networking platform, commonly known in English as RedNote] 小红书 小紅書), with a reply from the American side to Lǐ ({Plum (surname)} 李) Huá (Flower → [Magnificence; Glory; Splendour; Florescence | Best Part; Cream | Times; Years | China] | Flowery → [Magnificent; Splendid; Glorious; Florescent | Prosperous; Flourishing | Flashy; Extravagant | Chinese] 华 華):

[The original post can be found here.]

As an example of the cross-cultural exchange taking place, here is another video that I found on Xiǎohóngshū (Xiǎo·hóng·shū Little · Red · Book → [a Chinese social networking platform, commonly known in English as RedNote] 小红书 小紅書), by a fellow who very likely had often written letters as Lǐ ({Plum (surname)} 李) Huá (Flower → [Magnificence; Glory; Splendour; Florescence | Best Part; Cream | Times; Years | China] | Flowery → [Magnificent; Splendid; Glorious; Florescent | Prosperous; Flourishing | Flashy; Extravagant | Chinese] 华 華) when he was in school:

[The original post can be found here. Here is a rough translation of the introductory blurb: “40-year-old middle-aged retired military officer’s only post-retirement joy; among family members who understands?”]

Wild Beasts and a Great Wall

Unfortunately, as alluded to above, the politics of this Devil-ruled world, with its bitter and sometimes murderous power struggles, work to divide people, in spite of how people naturally desire to make friends and live in peace (and enjoy music). While many Chinese people on Xiǎohóngshū (Xiǎo·hóng·shū Little · Red · Book → [a Chinese social networking platform, commonly known in English as RedNote] 小红书 小紅書) feel like a Lǐ ({Plum (surname)} 李) Huá (Flower → [Magnificence; Glory; Splendour; Florescence | Best Part; Cream | Times; Years | China] | Flowery → [Magnificent; Splendid; Glorious; Florescent | Prosperous; Flourishing | Flashy; Extravagant | Chinese] 华 華) who after many years actually got replies from foreign pen pals, and while many American people who just joined Xiǎohóngshū (Xiǎo·hóng·shū Little · Red · Book → [a Chinese social networking platform, commonly known in English as RedNote] 小红书 小紅書) feel like they finally got to China and met some really nice, friendly people after digging holes to China as kids, their respective governments are in God’s eyes like wild beasts competing for territory and influence, warily circling each other, and preparing for vicious, bloody battle. (Indeed, even in the world, the USA is often symbolically portrayed as an eagle, and China is often symbolically portrayed as a dragon.)

The proud human cultural tradition mandating the use of the abnormally difficult-to-learn-and-remember Chinese characters to write Mandarin also puts a Great Wall between Chinese people and Mandarin learners in other nations who would like to write text messages to each other, leave comments on social media posts, etc. Many turn to tools like Google Translate for help, but these are really just coping mechanisms, band-aid solutions, while the basic problem of the characters remains.

The Great Wall of China

Chinese characters continue to act as a Great Wall dividing people who naturally want to be friends.

Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) technically works as a simple, easy-to-learn full writing system for reading and writing Mandarin, so it is technically ideally suited for texting, commenting, etc. Unfortunately, though, the stubbornly embedded traditional cultural primacy of characters and the related cultural prejudice against Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) will dissuade most people from beneficially using Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) in these ways. (Question: As Mandarin field language learners who are trying to walk on the narrow road to life, and who are doing a life-saving work to help other people also get on this narrow road, should we always limit ourselves to being like most people?—Matthew 7:13, 14.)

(In my limited time so far on Xiǎohóngshū (Xiǎo·hóng·shū Little · Red · Book → [a Chinese social networking platform, commonly known in English as RedNote] 小红书 小紅書), I have happened to come across a couple of comments containing Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音). One of these comments (from a user in the United States) renders the same message in English on one line, in simplified Chinese characters on another line, and then in Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) on yet another line, Rosetta Stone-style. The Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) is even well-formatted, not just as with a pronunciation aid, but as with a full writing system, with tone marks, word separation, and punctuation.)

As shown above, audio and video technology also now enable people to just talk (and sing!) to communicate across distance and time. However, even in this regard, many Mandarin learners have allowed the visually intricate characters to stunt their Mandarin speech skills by distracting them from properly focusing on invisible sound, which is what Mandarin speech (and singing!) is actually made of. As discussed in other MEotW posts, this is effectively linguistic idolatry.

Spiritual Family in the Mandarin Field

As Mandarin field language learners, this whole situation with regular Chinese and American people enjoying meeting and making friends with each other on Xiǎohóngshū (Xiǎo·hóng·shū Little · Red · Book → [a Chinese social networking platform, commonly known in English as RedNote] 小红书 小紅書) may remind us of all the wonderful new friends we made when we joined the Mandarin field. As Jehovah’s people serving in the Mandarin field, or in any congregation or group with people from different cultural backgrounds, we are not only aware of the possibility of making friends with people of other nations and cultures, we also know that every human being is really part of the one human family descended from the same ancestors and created by God. Additionally, we know that Jehovah has assigned us to help people from all the nations to join us in his spiritual paradise, in which they can become our spiritual brothers and sisters and live in peace with us forever on a paradise earth. (Matthew 28:19, 20) Let us, then, not let the world’s politics or human traditions prevent us from doing this life-saving, uniting, God-assigned work as well as we ought to.

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Hāmǐjíduōdùn

Hāmǐjíduōdùn (Armageddon 哈米吉多顿 哈米吉多頓) ← 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.]

At the time of this writing, jw.org was featuring an article with the following title:

English:

Will Armageddon Begin in Israel?—What Does the Bible Say?

Mandarin:

📖 📄 📘 Hāmǐjíduōdùn (Armageddon 哈米吉多顿 哈米吉多頓) Dàzhàn (Dà·zhàn {Big → [Great]} · War 大战 大戰) Huì (Will 会 會) zài (in 在) Yǐsèliè (Israel 以色列) Bàofā (Bào·fā Explode · {Issue Forth} → [Erupt] 爆发 爆發) ma ([? ptcl for “yes/no” questions] 吗 嗎)? Shèngjīng (Shèng·jīng (the) Holy · Scriptures → [the Bible] 圣经 聖經) de (’s 的) Guāndiǎn (Guān·diǎn {Looking At → [View]} · Point → [Viewpoint] 观点 觀點) Shì (Is 是) Shénme (Shén·me What · [suf] 什么 什/甚麼)?

This week’s MEotW is “Hāmǐjíduōdùn (Armageddon 哈米吉多顿 哈米吉多頓)”, the Mandarin syllables of which were obviously chosen first because of how much they sound like the English word “Armageddon” (and perhaps the original Hebrew word from which that came), not because of the meanings of the supposedly ideographic Chinese characters used to write them out (“Exhale Rice Lucky Much Pausing”??? 🤷🏻).

This emphasizes to us that when it comes to human language, SPEECH is primary—SOUNDS are the primary medium for transmitting meaning, and a writing system that transmits meaning purely with its visual symbols, without any dependency on speech sounds, is not a thing. However, this erroneous concept is so prevalent that there’s a name for it: The Ideographic Myth.

Several past MEotW posts have mentioned in passing the Ideographic Myth concerning Chinese characters, so it’s about time this blog took a deeper dive into this subject. Below are some selected excerpts from the chapter “The Ideographic Myth”, of the book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, by John DeFrancis, along with some commentary.

the concept of written symbols conveying their message directly to our minds, thus bypassing the restrictive intermediary of speech

This is a definition of the concept of “ideographic” writing.

Aren’t Chinese characters a sophisticated system of symbols that similarly convey meaning without regard to sound? Aren’t they an ideographic system of writing?

The answer to these questions is no. Chinese characters are a phonetic, not an ideographic, system of writing…There never has been, and never can be, such a thing as an ideographic system of writing.

Indeed, Chinese characters are always used to represent some language’s speech, are they not? They can be used to represent the speech of multiple languages, but they are not used in any way in which they do not represent the speech of any language, are they? There are no Chinese characters that have no spoken pronunciation in any language, are there? So, while some may find the idea of Chinese characters being an ideographic writing system fascinating, in real-life, actual use, Chinese characters are a phonetic writing system representing a language’s speech sounds (which do the actual representing of meanings)—Chinese characters are not an ideographic writing system directly representing meanings.

Origin of the Myth

The concept of Chinese writings as a means of conveying ideas without regard to speech took hold as part of the chinoiserie fad among Western intellectuals that was stimulated by the generally highly laudatory writings of Catholic missionaries from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.

…

It was not acquaintance with Chinese but decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing following Napoleon’s conquests in North Africa that led to the coining of several expressions related to the ideographic idea.

…

Decipherment of this script had long been impeded by the notion that it was symbolic of ideas, particularly mystical or spiritual ones. It was not just the discovery of the famous Rosetta Stone, with its bilingual text in three scripts (Hieroglyphic Egyptian, Demotic Egyptian, and Greek) that made this possible. As Gordon (1968:24) stresses: “The decipherment of Hieroglyphic Egyptian required the replacement of the deep-seated notion of symbolism by the correct view that the main (though not the only) feature of the script is phonetic.”

Champollion’s success in deciphering the Egyptian script was due to his recognition of its phonetic aspect.

…

The rebus idea seems obvious to us since we use it in children’s games, but it actually constitutes a stupendous invention, an act of intellectual creation of the highest order—a quantum leap forward beyond the stage of vague and imprecise pictures to a higher stage that leads into the ability to represent all the subtleties and precision expressible in spoken language. Writing is now directly, clearly, firmly related to language: to speech. If there was ever any question whether a symbol had a sound attached to it, this now receives a positive answer. In the earliest form known to us, the character for “wheat” was borrowed to represent the word “come” precisely because both were pronounced in the same way.

…

What is crucial is to recognize that the diverse forms perform the same function in representing sound. To see that writing has the form of pictures and to conclude that it is pictographic is correct in only one sense—that of the form, but not the function, of the symbols. We can put it this way:

QUESTION: When is a pictograph not a pictograph?

ANSWER: When it represents a sound.

The use of the pictograph for “wheat” to represent the homophonous word ləg (“come”) transformed the function of the symbol from pictographic depiction of an object to syllabic representation of a sound. This change in function has been the essential development marking the emergence of all true systems of writing, including Chinese.

Sinological Contribution to the Myth

The fact that some Chinese pictographs have not undergone a change in form parallel to the change in function has tended to obscure the significance of the change that did take place. As a result, the phonetic aspect of Chinese writing is minimized by many people, even specialists in the field.

…

The error of exaggerating the pictographic and hence semantic aspect of Chinese characters and minimizing if not totally neglecting the phonetic aspect tends to fix itself very early in the minds of many people, both students of Chinese and the public at large, because their first impression of the characters is likely to be gained by being introduced to the Chinese writing system via some of the simplest and most interesting pictographs…. Unless a determined effort is made to correct this initial impression, it is likely to remain as an article of faith not easily shaken by subsequent exposure to different kinds of graphs.

…

Myth vs. Reality

A limited number of pictographic or semantic characters…cannot be considered indicative of full systems of nonphonetic writing that can function like ordinary orthographies to express nearly everything we can express in spoken language. The fact is that such a full system of nonphonetic writing has never existed. The system of Chinese characters, the Sumerian, Accadian, and Hittite cuneiform systems, and the Egyptian hieroglyphic system were none of them complete systems of semantic writing.

How limited is the number of pictographic or semantic characters, like “人”, “口”, “山”, etc., as opposed to the number of characters with some phonetic component related to pronunciation? This table from p. 129 of the book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy says that only about 3% of all Chinese characters are purely pictographic or semantic:

Table 7 Semantic Versus Phonetic Aspects of Chinese Characters, p. 129, _The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy_

This myth, it is apparent, exists in two aspects. Both must be rejected. The first is that the Chinese characters constitute an existing system of ideographic writing. This has been shown to be factually untrue. The second aspect is the validity of the ideographic concept itself. I believe it to be completely untenable because there is no evidence that people have the capacity to master the enormous number of symbols that would be needed in a written system that attempts to convey thought without regard to sound, which means divorced from spoken language. …But while it is possible for a writing system to have many individual “ideographs” or “ideograms”, it is not possible to have a whole writing system based on the ideographic principle. Alphabetic writing requires mastery of several dozen symbols that are needed for phonemic representation. Syllabic writing requires mastery of what may be several hundred or several thousand symbols that are needed for syllabic representation. Ideographic writing, however, requires mastery of the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of symbols that would be needed for ideographic representation of words or concepts without regard to sound. A bit of common sense should suggest that unless we supplement our brains with computer implants, ordinary mortals are incapable of such memory feats.

Indeed, how many concepts or ideas exist, or could potentially come into existence as they get invented? That’s how many symbols an actual ideographic writing system would need to have. Obviously, even if such a system could be made to exist, it would be unusable by actual imperfect humans. Even Chinese characters, which “only” number somewhere over 100,000, are not numerous enough to be an actual ideographic writing system, and Chinese characters are already inhumanly complex and numerous.

Objections to the Term “Ideographic”

We need to go further and throw out the term itself.

…

Chinese characters represent words (or better, morphemes), not ideas, and they represent them phonetically, for the most part, as do all real writing systems despite their diverse techniques and differing effectiveness in accomplishing the task.

…

Both terms [“logographic” and “ideographic”] are inadequate and misleading because they fail to indicate that the process of getting from graph to word/morpheme involves the phonetic aspect of the latter and because this failure leaves the way open to the idea that we get from graph to word/morpheme by means of some nonphonetic, in a word, “ideographic”, approach. Only the adoption of some such term as “morphosyllabic”, which calls attention to the phonetic aspect, can contribute to dispelling the widespread misunderstanding of the nature of Chinese writing.

Chinese characters being a “morphosyllabic” writing system means that “each character is pronounced as a single syllable and represents a single morpheme”* (smallest unit of language SOUND with meaning)—a Chinese character does NOT bypass language sounds to directly represent an idea.

So, every time you hear in Mandarin a name like “Hāmǐjíduōdùn (Armageddon 哈米吉多顿 哈米吉多頓)” that came from another language, and is made up in Mandarin of syllables that make no sense except that they sound like the name in the original language, remember that the Ideographic Myth is just that—a myth!

As worshippers of the one true God Jehovah, we carefully avoid spiritual idolatry, realizing that no visible idol or image can be allowed to replace the invisible, almighty Spirit Jehovah as the object of our worship. Similarly, us Chinese field language learners must also carefully avoid the linguistic idolatry of considering visible Chinese characters to be direct representations of meaning in Chinese languages, when the truth is that in human languages, including Chinese languages, meaning is primarily transmitted via invisible speech.

 

* John DeFrancis, The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984), p. 125. ^