Chinese Writing System in Asia

Yu Li is Assistant Professor of Chinese in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Loyola Marymount University, USA. Her research interests include Chinese linguistics, Chinese language pedagogy, East Asian calligraphy, and the Chinese linguistic landscape in the diaspora.

"This is a comprehensive introduction to the Chinese writing system from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. The author writes beautifully on the linguistic, socio-cultural, anthropological, literary and artistic aspects of Chinese characters." - Hongyuan Dong, Assistant Professor of Chinese Language and Linguistics, The George Washington University in Washington DC, USA."This book is a welcome new introduction to the Chinese writing system. I see the strengths of the book in three areas: its wide scope in the topics it covers, its thoroughness in the treatment of the topics, and its balance between scholarly discussions of the topics and its attention to popular interest in the topics." - Guohe Zheng, Professor of Japanese, Ball State University, USA.

• Part I Linguistic PreliminariesChapter 1 Foundational conceptsChapter 2 What is writing?Chapter 3 What kinds of writing systems are there?Chapter 4 Pīnyīn tutorialPart II Writing ChineseChapter 5 The Chinese speechChapter 6 Written ChineseChapter 7 The Chinese writing systemChapter 8 Demythifying the Chinese scriptPart III Borrowing the Chinese writing systemChapter 9 Chinese characters in Asia: An overviewChapter 10 Writing KoreanChapter 11 Writing JapaneseChapter 12 Writing VietnamesePart IV Reforming the Chinese scriptChapter 13 Phonetic writing before pīnyīnChapter 14 PīnyīnChapter 15 Simplification of Chinese charactersChapter 16 Writing and technology in modern ChinaPart V Identity and gender in writing ChineseChapter 17 Handwriting and personhoodChapter 18 Sexism in the Chinese writing systemChapter 19 Nǚshū: Women’s scriptChapter 20 Script choice in writing JapanesePart VI Chinese Characters in art and literatureChapter 21 Chinese calligraphyChapter 22 A calligraphy workshopChapter 23 Modern calligraphy in ChinaChapter 24 Chinese Characters in Avant-garde artChapter 25 Chinese Characters and Western Modernist poetry