oshobob  The Living Workshop                                
                                         Osho Bob talks
What are Chinese simplified characters,
how did they originate, and who is better,
Mao Zedong or Chiang Kai-Shek?
In mainland China today, the people read and write in what's
called "simplified characters".  Since about 95% of all people
who use Chinese live on the mainland, that means that 19
out of every 20 Chinese alive today use the simplified form of
the hanzi, or what Western people refer to as "characters".

These new forms were developed in the last 50 years or so,
as an attempt by the victorious Communist Party of China,
post 1949, to raise the level of literacy in China, making it
possible for the masses, the "proletariat", to more easily learn
the written form of their language. A largely successful
experiment--coupled with widespread increased educational
opportunities for all, the literacy rate has skyrocketed in
China from probably a 20% number, to a level now matching
any "advanced" country--maybe 80-90%.

To make a long story short, there are 2 forms of written
Chinese now--the "traditional" (fanti zi), and the "simplified"
(jianti zi).  The traditional characters are the set of ideograms
developed over 4,000 years, used in all China up until the
1950s, and still used today in Taiwan, Hong Kong,
Singapore, and what is called the Overseas Chinese
Community--the global diaspora.

In the early 1950s, the CCP embarked on a massive project
to make the quite difficult to learn and remember characters
easier to study. They reformed about 2,000 of the total
usable set of maybe 7,000 characters--the remaining 5,000
or so characters remained exactly the same. This new total
group is called "simplified Chinese".

A misconception that exists in the world today for most people
who know just a little about Chinese, is that the simplified
forms used in China are completely different from the
traditional forms. Not really true. Only about one third of the
commonly used characters have been altered. That is, if you
are reading a newspaper in Beijing which uses simplified
characters, two thirds of those characters are really still
"traditional"--the exact same forms as used throughout
Chinese history. And the vice-versa is also true--if you were
to read a Taipei internet site in traditional characters, two
thirds of those characters would be exactly the same as in a
"simplified" form of that article.

But still, it is true to say, that the texts are different enough,
that the mainland Chinese do not read articles in traditional
characters, and the Hong Kong people and Taiwanese don't
read anything in simplified.

Leaving aside the political animosity that plays a large part in
this continuing "family feud" of the Chinese--simply put, if you
want the vast majority of Chinese to read anything you write
in Chinese, you will have to write it in simplified characters.
Whether you like it or not. It's just a fact of present-day reality.

Now the question still remains--who is better, Mao Zedong or
Chiang Kai-Shek? Mao was a communist atheist who had a
devout Buddhist mother, and Chiang became a Christian,
with a large crucifix ala the Pope, seen behind him in
photos...Mao liked fatty pork dishes, and Chiang was a
skinny "Generalissimo" bankrolled by the West. Mao initiated
the major reformation of the Chinese language to simplified,
but continued to use traditional himself.....so, I guess the
verdict is still not in--maybe time and history will decide.

Look forward to the next installment of Osho Bob Talks,
which will tackle the question of "Does anyone know that the
Tibetans made and drank a lot of beer, way before the
Chinese brought Yanjing Beer by the truckload into the
area?"

Bob
May 29, 2008
USA