Happy to know you are ready to join Master Zicius on this wonderful journey. In order to ensure that the experience will not be hindered by questions, please find below some useful\u00a0information concerning the Chinese language that will help\u00a0understand the context of this journey.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Chinese used a\u00a0more or less unified writing system from roughly 200 BC until 1949 AD.\u00a0A civil war was fought in 1949 between two major political\u00a0factions: the Communist Chinese and the Nationalist Chinese. The Communists militarily defeated the Nationalists, but not totally: the victors\u00a0took over continental China and formed the People’s Republic of China (PRC), whereas the defeated Nationalists retreated to the island of Taiwan and continued to embody\u00a0the Republic of China (ROC). Since neither side achieved total victory, both survived\u00a0into the 21st century claiming to be the “legitimate” China.<\/p>\n
In order to combat widespread illiteracy in Mainland China following the war, the PRC enacted a major linguistic reform to “simplify” the written language to make learning easier.\u00a0This meant that a number of characters were redesigned, rewritten, and at times reinvented for practical (ease of learning) rather than historical or cultural reasons, and thus came\u00a0“Simplified Chinese”. The ROC (and other Chinese communities overseas, such as Hong Kong) did not enact or adopt similar\u00a0reforms in tandem, and kept\u00a0the “traditional” writing system, hence the term “Traditional Chinese”.<\/p>\n
Due to the historical scope\u00a0of this journey, all characters will be primarily examined in their\u00a0Traditional <\/strong>writing form.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Due to the ancient\u00a0and tumultuous\u00a0history of the Chinese civilisation, it is remarkable to note that the etymology of many Chinese characters has survived into the modern age, despite the countless evolutionary\u00a0transformations that the language has gone through in 5000 years. The intent of our study\u00a0is to be as historically and linguistically accurate as possible, in order to explain why and how a Chinese character is written the way it is written.<\/p>\n However, some characters have gone through so many transformations over the ages that its original design intent and etymology\u00a0are\u00a0no longer clear. Some transformations also injected\u00a0\u00a0“inconsistent\u00a0changes” into the language, \u00a0where one same character might have inconsistent meanings, or where one character transformed into a wholly\u00a0different character over time.\u00a0This means some characters\u00a0will have very weak etymological elements, whereas some other characters will have multiple possible interpretations.\u00a0Diverse\u00a0and unique meanings can be extracted from a character if its original intent is no longer clear.<\/p>\n Granted that every character that is chosen for presentation here has been researched\u00a0and historically examined prior to\u00a0publishing, the systematic and academic methods will not\u00a0yield the same success with every character in the language.<\/p>\n With that said, being entertaining, accessible and creative, is also an integral part of the journey. For this reason, creative liberty will occasionally come into play in order to tackle particular challenging or obscure characters.<\/p>\n Besides, Master Zicius’s wit and twisted humor are legendary! Never underestimate the devious master.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n China was Confucian society for most of its history, and Confucianism is an inherently patriarchal ideology. With very few exceptions in its history, Chinese society was\u00a0mostly a male dominated society,. It is interesting to note that this male dominance\u00a0can be\u00a0quite visible through the study of the language. This is simply a\u00a0note to remind\u00a0everyone that the minds that created some of these\u00a0characters\u00a0were\u00a0inextricably linked to the historical era and societies in which they lived.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Happy to know you are ready to join Master Zicius on this wonderful journey. In order to ensure that the experience will not be hindered by questions, please find below some useful\u00a0information concerning the Chinese language that will help\u00a0understand the context of this journey. Simplified\u00a0Chinese vs Traditional Chinese The Chinese used a\u00a0more or less […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zicius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zicius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zicius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zicius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zicius.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.zicius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":335,"href":"https:\/\/www.zicius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9\/revisions\/335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zicius.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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