Decode Chinese Culture While Learning Chinese Characters

Decode Chinese Culture While Learning Chinese Characters
2007-01-31 21:00:53 CRIENGLISH.com


With the development of China\'s economy, Chinese language classes are flourishing all over the world; around 2,300 universities and 100 schools have added Chinese into their curriculum, as 124 Confucius Institutes have been established outside of China.

Meanwhile, in China, Shanghai is criticized for using English too much and most college students worry about the test for English before graduation. Here, Chinese, people\'s mother tongue, is to some extent ignored, or at least not as important as English in some people\'s eyes.

When one masters one\'s mother tongue, it\'s natural to pursue a second language. But, with Chinese, long deemed a fossil of history and culture with its 5,000 year history and characters representing unique symbolism, it\'s hard to feel confident enough to move on.

This is when a new book, promoting traditional Chinese culture, entitled Tu Sheng Interprets Chinese Characters, comes in. Recently published by the People\'s Daily Publishing House, it had its debut at the Great Hall of the People Wednesday afternoon.

Tu Sheng, or Li Tusheng, born in 1953, spent 30 years studying traditional Chinese culture and is a regular lecturer at famous universities in China and across the world. Some even call him one of the only real masters of Sinology around today.

The book, which took Li five years to research, carefully selects 1,000 frequently used Chinese characters and interprets them with two separate explanations: the basic meaning of the character and its internal cultural meaning. The characters are divided into ten groups, covering politics, the economy, law, the military, education, ethics, religion, architecture and so on.

It\'s believed the book will serve as a guide for Chinese characters among the many learning the Chinese language across the world, as well as a golden key for those inside China to decode Chinese culture.

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This article is overstated.WE should learn from Russia, where examing is very stricted.