Tue, Mar 04, 2003 page8

• Keeping to tradition to ensure future

  • By Chen Ying-ching 陳穎青
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  During the Lunar New Year, the Council for Cultural Affairs published a five-year plan focusing on an attempt to establish a world heritage site in Taiwan. Jade Mountain, Taroko Gorge, the Alishan railway and eight other sites are seen as potential world heritage sites. Each one of these sites of course has its own special features, but the country in fact has one more very important, internationally valuable item of world heritage that no one is paying any attention to.

  There is a form of writing that has been used for 2,000 years, the only tool for the continuing record of the history, documents, commercial deeds, laws, learning, thought and literature of the only survivor of the four old civilizations. The people using this script used to be the largest ethnic group on earth, a status which has been drastically diminished over the past 50 years. The number using it now is less than 3 percent of the world population.

  In its 2,000-year life, this script has witnessed the era of hand scripture, the era of printing and now the Internet era. The basic style has not changed, and has even spawned a very particular calligraphic art.

  I am of course talking of the traditional Chinese script that all Taiwanese, including myself, have grown up with and know so well.

  How many places are there in the world still using the traditional Chinese script? Taiwan and Hong Kong. That's it. China can be left aside, as can Singapore, which switched to using simplified characters a long time ago. Overseas Chinese in the South Seas and in the US, and even many Overseas Chinese schools, which claim to protect and pass on the essence of Chinese culture, are switching to the simplified characters.

  Within the wider area of Chinese linguistic culture, the traditional script seems to be in a weak position as a distinct minority. From the perspective of cultural heritage, however, Taiwan is in an extraordinary position. We use the traditional characters not only in our academic research, but also in our daily lives. This means maintaining the tradition of the 2,000 year-old Chinese script in a continuously existing, vibrant and living environment. In China, on the other hand, the traditional script can already be said to have died out. At the most, it exists as a specimen in academic institutions.

  The traditional characters are the only cultural connection between ancient China and the modern world, and Taiwan is the guardian of this connection.

  If we truly want to enter the world of ancient China, we cannot avoid traditional characters. In both Sinology and etymology, it is impossible to ignore the traditional form. Regardless of how many ancient books China has rearranged with the simplified script, those books will be of no value to Sinology. Departments of literary history in China must in fact give classes in ancient Chinese to enable students to study the Shuowen, the classical dictionary, or understand the Taoist classics.

  Consider the activists of the May Fourth Movement. They really worked very hard at advocating a simplification of the Chinese script in order to enlighten the general public, but, unfortunately not all of their plans worked out. Ninety years later, there's this thing called a computer, that has overturned almost everything they knew about the writing of Chinese. Cangjie, Dayi, phonetic symbols and other input methods make the input of traditional characters just as easy (or as difficult) as that of simplified characters.

  The beautiful vision forged in China nearly 90 years ago almost looks like a historical mistake today. Chinese scholars of the Chinese script now publicly admit that the simplified script is convenient only for writing books, but that when it comes to expressing the meaning of characters or visual recognition, it compares unfavorably with the traditional script.

  Since there are many problems with simplified characters, in particular a heartless separation from cultural tradition, then what is the rationale behind Overseas Chinese communities tending towards the simplified system? Is there any sense of crisis about the matter? Have we thought of any countermeasures?

  The traditional script is in fact the most powerful and invincible cultural weapon that our ancestors passed down to us. If we could use the concept that "Taiwan = traditional script = true Chinese culture" in Overseas Chinese communities, and even sell it to the rest of the world, we would stand a chance of becoming the true guardians of Chinese culture, in possession of the ultimate right to interpret Chinese culture. No matter how large China's population, how many historic relics the country holds, how good business is in Beijing bookstores, as long as China holds onto the simplified script, it is in the end destined for defeat in this regard.

  All this can be taken as read. But would we be prepared to launch a five-year plan to establish it?

  Frankly, I doubt it. We are currently doing all we can to avoid China, including its government and anything else defined by the word "China." The "one country, two systems" scam is of course -- the kind of scam that we must not be fooled by -- but even the cultural and the historical China are being completely rejected. We are afraid to use what clearly is our cultural advantage. People even want to return what clearly are the treasures of our culture stored in the National Palace Museum. We have magical treasures in our possession that are of no use, because we keep them in storage in embarrassment, afraid that our cultural subjectivity will suddenly will be lost if someone finds out.

  We are in fact being tied down by our own attitudes, believing that China's government is the possessor of Chinese culture. Recognizing the sources of our culture means recognizing that we are dependent on Chinese culture. That China itself proclaims the same thing doesn't matter. If we wanted to analyze the matter in detail, we would ask whether the "people's government" has been more constructive or more destructive towards Chinese culture during its 50-odd years in power. I think there would be a lot of counting to be done before we could settle that account.

  Chinese culture is the sum of several thousand years of accumulated history. Each generation, on either side of the Taiwan Strait, are only passersby who are steeped in that culture. What we inherit will not disappear just because we don't recognize it. Try as you might, you cannot rid yourself of your culture, nor can anyone steal it from you. If this country can succeed in becoming seen as the accepted representative of Chinese culture, then how could another country claim to be the suzerain of Chinese culture? Culture does not mean having more historic relics or sites.

  We have the luckiest opportunity in history: to win the position of guardian of Chinese culture, but are we willing to do so?

  Chen Ying-ching is vice president of Owl Publishing House.

  Translated by Perry Svensson
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