Kingdom of Characters looks at the modernization of China in the 20th century from the perspective of its language. The Chinese language(s) presented a challenge to the country's participation in the rapidly globalizing world whose terms were set by Western powers. For example, how does one send a Chinese telegram when Morse code is based on the Roman alphabet?
The book is full of interesting insights about Chinese languages and their script, but it is poorly organized and fails to make its central argument that there was a "language revolution that made China modern." For instance, the first chapter tells the story of Wang Zhao, a fugitive who sneaks back into China in 1900 with a plan for simplifying the process of learning to read and write. We learn, though, that others had been attempting to provide simplified phonetic scripts for at least 50 years, and Wang's ultimate contribution was directed at a different problem: the proliferation of dialects. (He got Mandarin recognized as the standard dialect.)
Kingdom of Characters could approach its subject from one of two angles: as a retelling of history that shows the under-appreciated role of language reform in modernization, or as an explanation of the technical challenges of systematizing Chinese characters and the creative solutions. (Amazon files the book under "Programming > Unicode Encoding Standard", so they clearly expected the latter.)
Tsu does provide a pocket history of 20th century China, from its subjection to Europe and Japan during the Qing Dynasty through the Nationalist and Communist periods, through the side door of language-related developments. However, the political environment provides the context for the language innovation and not vice versa. The language revolution did not make China modern; China's increasing modernity gave it increasing leverage in shaping global communication standards.
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