For some, studying poetry is China’s equivalent to studying the Bible: a way to learn the written language and a source of inspiration or entertainment. Students in school now study works from a thousand years ago or more, and elementary students are often required by either school or their parents to memorize collections of ancient poetry. This stability of language (and Confucian values of respect for elders) played a huge role in the strong legacy of ancient Chinese literature both in China and overseas. To this day, written Chinese characters have changed very little. Though there were once varying versions of the characters, different by region, the First Emperor Qin Shi Huang, with his unification of the warring states, also mandated a unification of writing systems. The Chinese characters are based on meaning, not sound - this is why it was so common to find Chinese characters exported to neighboring countries like Japan, Korea, and Vietnam - though the spoken languages might be wildly different, the written versions languages would be easily decipherable. Chinese, as a written language, changes very very slowly, to the point that people now would still be able to understand the Analects of Confucius, written over two thousand years ago. ![]() Most people don’t read his works unless required to, and then they forget the contents shortly after, mostly for reasons such as difficulty to understand and irrelevance to modern life.Īll this is not the case with Chinese. ![]() Shakespeare, perhaps, is one of our most studied writers, and still most of us remember only the most basic ideas: Romeo and Juliet were in love, Hamlet had some family drama. In fact, English changes so quickly that the language one thousand or two thousand years ago could hardly be called English at all.Īnd because of this phenomenon, studies of literature in school extend only to works a few hundred years old anything older requires a translated, modernized version or else a prerequisite of ancient English study. The further we go back in time, the less likely it is that our versions of English would be mutually intelligible. Our language, based on phonetics, is rapidly changing - if we were to go back in time, not only would we have a difficult time understanding our predecessors’ speech, but we would be at a loss reading their inconsistent spelling, outdated vocabulary, and strange versions of our modern letters. ![]() As members of American and English-speaking society, it’s hard to relate to the literary culture of China.
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