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The War Between Traditional and Simplified Chinese

In early June, Harrow International School sent a letter to parents announcing that the school will adopt simplified Chinese characters for their kindergarten and primary school curriculum  to better prepare their pupils for “the context Hong Kong will be in by 2047.”

Why is this controversial?

Language, spoken or written, has a significant impact. In a previous post, “Do You Speak Chinese,” I wrote about the transition between Hokkien and Mandarin in Taiwan and how Baba’s teacher punished his classmate for speaking Hokkien in school. This story demonstrates that language is not only the soul of a society, it is also a powerful weapon that can be used to control the populace.

It’s starting to happen in Hong Kong too.

Simplified Chinese characters were introduced in China in the early 20th century to increase literacy rate. During the latter part of the 20th century, the PRC government made it the official writing system of China. Other Chinese speaking countries, such as Singapore and Malaysia have also adopted simplified Chinese, but Taiwan and Hong Kong are still using the traditional script. The use of traditional characters sets Hong Kong (and Taiwan) apart from the PRC. It is a not-so-silent protest: “We are not part of the People’s Republic of China!”

The pro-independence camp in Hong Kong, those who were involved in the umbrella movement, are against integration with Mainland China. They see Harrow International School ‘s decision to adopt simplified characters as kowtowing to the PRC.

The Umbrella Movement, a series of pro-independence protests, kicked off in Hong Kong in September 2014. It lasted 79 days but did not succeed in creating permanent changes in governance.

To the dismay of many Hong Kongers, Hong Kong will unlikely be independent of China. It has been geo-politically part of the PRC since the United Kingdom handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997 after a 150-year rule.  The stipulation is that the PRC would have sovereignty of Hong Kong, but they would rule Hong Kong under “one country, two systems” model, meaning that the PRC’s would not enforce their socialist system in Hong Kong for fifty years.  However, PRC is already exerting their control over Hong Kong in many ways, like in education. Recently, the Education Bureau mandated a new Chinese History lesson in all secondary schools in Hong Kong.

The PRC’s effort to influence education in Hong Kong made more progress when Harrow International School decided to adopt simplified Chinese characters in their curriculum. They are the first international school to do so—how many more will soon follow?

Reading the article about Harrow International School is just another reminder that the clock is ticking for Hong Kong, and possibly Taiwan too. Taiwan has a slightly different situation than Hong Hong—its status in the international stage is ambiguous. However, living in Hong Kong, I can’t help but feel what’s happening here will eventually occur in Taiwan too—the PRC is patient, they are taking their time and making substantial progress in changing Hong Kong. First, they modify the school curriculum, then they take away the language.  Slowly but surely they are taking over Hong Kong, one step at a time. Most recently, the PRC plans to enforce Chinese law on a new train station on Hong Kong soil. 

Before we know it, Hong Kong will have centralized media and censored speech.  Residents will be living in constant fear as there will be more people like Liu Xiaobo, a Nobel laureate, and democracy activist who died in Chinese custody. He had spent his life protesting against the one-party rule in China and was serving an 11-year sentence when he was diagnosed with liver cancer. I don’t want to live in a society where people are imprisoned and denied access to medical care because they criticize the government.

Sadly, that’s the way the world seems to be going right now—and it is frightening.

 

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Do You Speak Chinese?

There are many different Chinese languages with up to 200 dialects, and most of them are mutually intelligible. Illustration by Ahmara Smith.

With Beijing’s growing influence, its dialect, Mandarin, also known as Putonghua (the common language), has become the most dominant Chinese language. But this wasn’t always the case, not according to the speakers of other Chinese languages.

In the late 80’s, my family moved from Japan to Taiwan. This was just a few years after the Taiwanese government finally lifted the martial law. I was six years old.

Let’s quickly revisit Taiwanese history and its languages: Historically, at least up to the 1940s, most people in Taiwan spoke Hokkien, which is a version of a southern Chinese language from Fujian province, where many Taiwanese people came from during the 1700’s. During the Japanese occupation, some Japanese words and expressions were integrated into the Taiwanese Hokkien language. I remember clearly my grandparents speaking this Japanese-fied version of Hokkien.

When the Kuomintang (KMT) took control of Taiwan, they made Mandarin the official language and forced everyone to learn it.

I spoke neither Hokkien or Mandarin.

This is me as a Kindergartener in Japan.

Regardless, my parents threw me into a local school.

During class one day, I needed to use the toilet. Unable to communicate with the teacher verbally, I stood up and made my way towards the washroom. I only made it halfway down the hall when my teacher caught up with me, led me back to the classroom and sat me back down in my little wooden chair at my desk. A few moments later, I got up again and made another attempt. The teacher got me again and scolded me as she led me back to my seat.

I didn’t know exactly what she said, but I understood that she was displeased with me. I didn’t dare to get up again. Instead, I sat in my chair and concentrated on holding it in.

Eventually, a warm stream trickled down my legs and created a large, dark stain on my pleated navy blue skirt and a yellow pool around the legs of my little wooden chair. I burst into tears—I was powerless without speaking the language.

This sad little story is a segway to discuss the power of language, and specifically, the Chinese language. Spoken Chinese is organized into five main groups, Mandarin, Yue, Min, Wu, and Hakka. These languages are mutually intelligible.  Within those groups, there are hundreds of dialects, limited to small geographical areas.

Mandarin is only one of the hundreds of spoken Chinese languages. The Beijing dialect is the most common, spoken by approximately two-thirds of the Chinese population. At 55 million speakers, Cantonese, which is part of the Yue family, is the second most common Chinese language.  Hokkien, a language that is common in Taiwan and other countries where Fujan ancestry is common, is part of the Min language family.

How did Mandarin become “Putonghua,” the common language of China?

When Sun Yat-Sen overthrew the Qing Dynasty in 1911, Beijing became the capital of the new China. After some debating, the leadership decided that Mandarin is the official language of the new republic (This is strange because Dr. Sun and many of the leaders of the new republic are from Guangdong Province, and their mother tongue would have been Cantonese).

In Taiwan, Mandarin is known as “Guóyǔ”, literally translates to “the national language.”

During the occupation, the Japanese didn’t force the Taiwanese people to learn the language of their colonizers.** However, when the KMT arrived, they did. Baba told me a story of how his classmates were punished for speaking Hokkien at school. They had to wear a humiliating sign that said, “I spoke Hokkien” for the whole day for speaking the “uncivilized” tongue.

Here in Hong Kong, 97% of the population speaks Cantonese. If Beijing had their way, they would eliminate Cantonese completely. However, that would create an outcry that Beijing is not prepared to deal with. Instead, they slowly influence the educational curriculum in Hong Kong, to teach the next generation their version of the history.

The truth is, Mandarin is already common in Hong Kong. When my parents passed through Hong Kong in the early 90s, they said people didn’t speak Mandarin and yelled when spoken to in Mandarin. Thirty years later, the majority of people still speak Cantonese, but I can now get by speaking Mandarin if English fails.

Hmm. I wonder what the common language will in Hong Kong in another thirty years.

**As it turns out, The Japanese implemented an imperialist movement during their occupation. It was an assimilation initiative that forced Taiwanese people to adopt Japanese names and learn to speak Japanese.

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You are Chinese

 

What does it mean to be Chinese these days? Illustration by Ahmara Smith.

Several posts ago, I made an argument that many Taiwanese people are ethnically Chinese. Since then, more than a few of you, my dear readers, pointed out that I need to clarify what I meant by “Chinese”.

I have spent days agonizing over this post. Then I realized that the whole idea of “Chinese-ness” is loaded because it covers so many different aspects—ethnically, politically, and culturally.

In this post, I will make an attempt to address the ethnicity and political aspects of being Chinese. In the future, I will discuss the cultural aspect and show that all aspects of Chinese-ness are connected— this why the idea is so contested and messy.

Let’s define “Chinese-ness”. There are two-folds of Chinese-ness. First, you are Chinese if you can trace your ancestry back to the Middle Kingdom.

Second, the word “Chinese” also describes something or someone that have an association with the Chinese state— in the mind of the current Chinese government, the CPC, this association is trans-historical, linking the PRC with every previous Chinese state all the way back to the Qing dynasty.

For the sake of clarification, in the context of this blog, I will use the term “Chinese” to refer to the ethnic group. For those who are politically or culturally associated with the Chinese state, they are “Zhongguo ren”, or “Middle Kingdom people.” Middle Kingdom people are subjects to the Chinese state, and they may or may not be ethnically Han Chinese.

In other words, not every Chinese person is a Middle Kingdom person. (a second-generation Chinese Canadian may be ethnically Chinese but not a Chinese subject), and not every Middle Kingdom person is ethnically Chinese— I will elaborate below.  

Contrary to popular belief, the PRC isn’t a monoethnic state. The Middle Kingdom is a country of diverse ethnic groups— there may be as many as 400 ethnic groups, though the CPC only officially recognizes 56 of them. At 92% of the population, the Han Chinese are the dominant ethnic group in PRC. 

The CPC see themselves as the leader of the Chinese and the Middle Kingdom people. They also see themselves as the custodians of the Chinese culture. Anyone who poses a threat to the dominant and national narrative of Chinese-ness and Middle Kingdom-ness, like the  Uighurs, are punished relentlessly. The Uighurs are a minority ethnic group from Xinjiang Province, located in the northwest region of the country. They are distant cousins of the Turks, speak a Turkic language, and are predominately Muslims.

Uighur is an ethnic group in China genetically related to the Turks. Photo from Wikipedia.

When Mao took power in 1949, Xinjiang province became a part of PRC. The CPC encouraged the Han Chinese people to settle in Xinjiang. They took vital roles in government, often discriminating the Uighurs, leading to numerous protests and uprisings that challenge the authority of the party.

Needless to say, the Uighurs in Xinjiang is a thorn in the party’s back. In an effort to control them, they banned the Uighurs to express their culture by outlawing long beards and wearing veils. Furthermore, even as recently as January 2018, the party is still trying to assimilate the Uighurs by forcing them into re-educational camps. The plight of the Uighurs people is appalling and terrifying.

The Uighurs, are Middle Kingdom people, as they are holders of People’s Republic of China citizenship. However, they are certainly not Chinese.

As for me, I am Chinese— my ancestry can be traced back to Fujian Province. However, I was born in Japan to Taiwanese parents and grew up in Canada; I do not identify as a Middle Kingdom person. In other words, I am not a Chinese subject, though PRC would beg to defer. I am of Han Chinese ancestry, my family is from Taiwan, a contested territory  —both of which makes me “Chinese” (ethnically, politically and culturally) in their eyes. All Taiwanese are Chinese and Middle Kingdom people, they believe— we will realize that soon enough.

I shudder at that thought. Taiwanese people use a special “return to motherland” permit to go to China (including Hong Kong) since the PRC doesn’t recognize our passport. I am in Hong Kong as a Canadian citizen. I hope that the PRC wouldn’t be able to tell that I was Taiwanese since I was born in Japan.  If I get into trouble somehow (through this blog, for instance),  I might be able to access Canadian consular services instead of the alternative— disappearing into a black hole where no one can ever find me.

Illustration by Ahmara Smith.