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A review by georgiarose888
Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution that made China Modern by Jing Tsu
3.0
The history of the Chinese language is endlessly fascinating, yet I found myself editing this book in my head. The timeline meandered around, making for a confusing read, and the author would often repeat herself - making the same statements about a person multiple times (think: Wang Zhao was a person with a lot of Western sympathies…….(2 paragraphs later) Wang Zhao was part of a group that had a lot of Western sympathies)
Also, was desperately in need of more pictures/illustrations. There are long technical descriptions of very complicated machines that just didn’t lend well to picturing them in the imagination. I had to Google pictures of a lot of the things she was talking about just to get a vague reference. Similar thing with the language, there are illustrations of Chinese characters, but I would have liked more (and a demonstration of what Pinyin looks like! There is a whole chapter on it and not once does she include any actual pinyin!).
The story of the language saves it, but it was a bit needlessly arduous
3.5
Also, was desperately in need of more pictures/illustrations. There are long technical descriptions of very complicated machines that just didn’t lend well to picturing them in the imagination. I had to Google pictures of a lot of the things she was talking about just to get a vague reference. Similar thing with the language, there are illustrations of Chinese characters, but I would have liked more (and a demonstration of what Pinyin looks like! There is a whole chapter on it and not once does she include any actual pinyin!).
The story of the language saves it, but it was a bit needlessly arduous
3.5