Abolish Chinese characters
A few months ago, under the overhang walkway (teng-a-kha, or Hokkien architecture) of a Tainan side street, I saw a child — perhaps 10 years old — hunched over one of the collapsable tables of her parents’ food stall, writing columns of “hanzi” (漢字, Chinese/Han characters), each in their dozens.
A familiar, if rather sad sight in Taiwan — although not nearly as spectacular as Hugo Tseng’s (曾泰元) evocative account in this newspaper (“Rejuvenating ‘Chinese character,’” April 20, page 8), where he recalled the legend of Cangjie’s (倉頡) creation of hanzi, describing how “millet grains rained from the sky and the ghosts and gods wept at night.”
Tseng waxed lyrical about hanzi, calling it a “profound cultural significance,” a “monumental writing system,” and “one of humanity’s greatest intellectual achievements” — as if such ebullience could be taken for granted without evidence. The schoolchild might have no option, but adults like me have seen alternatives in other societies.
After just a couple of years of schooling in alphabetic script, including systems such as Korean “hangul,” all literature in that language becomes accessible to students. More importantly, they can express themselves readily in writing, and have time left over to explore other pursuits, such as learning another language, or start learning hanzi for historical interest. Instead, Taiwanese schoolchildren are burdened from an early age with long school days and years of tedious homework, much of it due to the demands of hanzi.
I am far from the first to criticize hanzi for being hard to learn and holding people back. Early 20th-century critiques — the great Chinese writer Lu Xun (魯迅) being a pioneer — paved the way for the (albeit incomplete) language reforms in China after the Communist Revolution, resulting in the creation of simplified characters and “Hanyu pinyin.” In contrast, the (then) anti-communist Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in Taiwan entrenched the use of traditional hanzi.
Such conservatism reminds me of Choe Man-ri (崔萬里), a Confucian academic at the 15th-century Korean royal court, who opposed King Sejong the Great’s invention of hangul. Choe fought against hangul in favor of hanzi, dreading that the innovation would “be our shame in serving the great and admiring China.”
National Cheng Kung University Department of Taiwanese Literature professor Wi-vun Taiffalo Chiung (蔣為文) was right when he wrote in 1996 that Taiwanese “cannot achieve independence unless we abolish Han characters.”
Happily, most Taiwanese languages already have Latin orthographies in use, and we can learn from the successes of Korea and Vietnam.
Te Khai-su
Helsinki, Finland
Anxious Taiwanese youth
When I scroll through social media or hear my friends talk about their packed schedules, such as doing an internship, preparing for an English proficiency test or studying for a civil service exam, I start to wonder if I am falling behind, because everyone around me seems to know exactly what they want and are moving forward steadily.
Although we have more time in our junior or senior year, the pressure to plan our future only gets heavier. Some students go on exchange programs, others prepare for graduate school exams, and many take part-time jobs to fill their time and gain experience.
For those who are still unsure about their passions or future path, this time can be incredibly stressful. Seeing others go after their goals just makes it harder.
A report by 104 Job Bank showed that the top source of negative emotions among university students is uncertainty about their career plans — 64.7 percent worry about not being able to find a job that meets their expectations.
After more than 12 years in Taiwan’s national education system, many of us still feel uncertain about the kind of life we truly want. Schools do offer career assessments from time to time, but these often only tell us which jobs might suit our personality type. They fall far short of providing real guidance or helping us find true direction.
Many people agree that Taiwan’s education system places too much emphasis on academic knowledge and exams. Learning is supposed to be the main goal of education, and exams are just tools to check how well students are learning, but now, it is the other way around.
Getting into a good school has become the main goal, and learning is just a way to prepare for the test. As a result, even though the Ministry of Education has tried for many years to reform the education system, the pressure from exams has not gone away. In fact, many students feel even more stressed now, and the true meaning of education has been lost.
Of course, in recent years, the ministry has made changes to the curriculum in an effort to address these issues. Although these adjustments have not yet fully taken effect, these reforms demonstrate the ministry’s commitment to improving the education system.
For us students, it is important to focus on what genuinely interests us. If we are still unsure about our direction, we can explore by reading more, trying internships or taking part-time jobs. These experiences can help us discover what kinds of work suit us best.
Today, many people are influenced by social media, but what we see online is often just the good parts of other people’s lives.
So, we should try not to compare ourselves too much. Everyone has their own timeline, and life is not a race.
Cheng Chieh-fang
Kaohsiung
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