Read Ten Lectures on Chinese Characters and Chinese Culture

This book is composed of the author's handouts and on-site questions and answers. I'm looking forward to 2018 Good Chinese Books Maybe I don't have enough opinions, and I feel that the content can be enriched. However, some contents in the book are very nutritious.

According to the book, the early rule of character creation was: "Take all bodies near, and take all things far away.". One example is very vivid.

"East" means the rising state of the sun to express the east, so the word "sun" is in the middle of the "wood" of the trees, indicating that the sun is rising; Gao means bright. It means that the sun is higher than the trees and becomes bright because there is no shelter; "Yao": reading y ǎ o means that the sun sinks into the horizon. The word "day" has different meanings in different positions of the word "wood".

There is also the word "seal". The seal is the shape of a man planting a tree with his hands outstretched in the gold inscription. Later, the right side became the "inch" character. Because in ancient times, enfeoffment of small countries was to plant trees to reflect the borders.

There is also "affectation". Separately, it is easy to understand why it is called affectation. "Straightening" means following the arrow. The standard for making arrows in ancient times was that the arrow weight was even and the shaft was straight. Because it is straight, the arrow shaft is also used as a ruler. "Emotion" originally refers to the natural state of things. So affectation is to deliberately correct the original state of things, which is barely natural.

Another valuable point of view is that Chinese characters are two-dimensional. Because English is linear, from left to right from different letters to form a given word. While Chinese characters are two-dimensional, that is, characters can be written in both horizontal and vertical directions, such as left and right structures and up and down structures. The advantage of this two-dimensional structure is that it can express more information in a smaller space.

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  1. The ancient Chinese culture has a long history. Today, it seems that some definitions are difficult to "flow long". We seldom settle down to study the family history of Chinese characters.

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