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A review by natkbaca
Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern by Jing Tsu
4.0
As a caution up front, having studied Chinese for a number of years and worked in Chinese text processing professionally, I was drawn to this work in a way that others might not be. Overall however, I found it to be a fairly interesting and approachable investigation into the stories behind what seem on the surface to be a dry set of topics. It’s a far-reaching work, covering everything from typewriters to telegraphy to modern text encoding, but the coverage is generally both accurate and engaging, if occasionally lacking in detail in particular places.
The reason for the one star off is the seeming acceptance at face value at the westernizing rhetoric of the 1920s May 4th reformers, and the less than critical approach to categorizing the supposed battle with modernity that the Chinese script has undergone. Those looking for a more scholarly and nuanced depiction of this question should pick up Thomas S. Mullaney’s The Chinese Typewriter: A History. This other fascinating work certainly thematically overlaps with this one for several chapters, but delves deeper regarding the question of who technology was built for and why. What it gains in subtlety though it does lose some in approachability.
In any case, I still quite enjoyed this book, and would recommend it both to those already familiar with Chinese and its technological challenges and those looking to understand more.
The reason for the one star off is the seeming acceptance at face value at the westernizing rhetoric of the 1920s May 4th reformers, and the less than critical approach to categorizing the supposed battle with modernity that the Chinese script has undergone. Those looking for a more scholarly and nuanced depiction of this question should pick up Thomas S. Mullaney’s The Chinese Typewriter: A History. This other fascinating work certainly thematically overlaps with this one for several chapters, but delves deeper regarding the question of who technology was built for and why. What it gains in subtlety though it does lose some in approachability.
In any case, I still quite enjoyed this book, and would recommend it both to those already familiar with Chinese and its technological challenges and those looking to understand more.