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Author:

Tsu, Jing, author.

Title:

Kingdom of characters : the language revolution that made China modern / Jing Tsu.

Publisher:

Riverhead Books,

Copyright Date:

2022

Description:

xix, 314 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Subject:

Chinese characters--History--20th century.
Chinese language--History--History--20th century.
Chinese language--Modern Chinese, 1919-

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 283-304) and index.

Contents:

A Mandarin in revolution (1900) -- Chinese typewriters and America (1912) -- Tipping the scale of telegraphy (1925) -- The librarian's card catalog (1938) -- When "Peking" became "Beijing" (1958) -- Entering into the computer (1979) -- The digital sinosphere (2020).

Summary:

"After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world's most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire, with literacy reserved for the elite few. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China's greatest and most daunting challenge was a linguistic one. Just as important as China's technological and industrial advances and political maneuvers was the century-long fight to make the Chinese language-with its many dialects and complex character-based script-accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology. Kingdom of Characters follows the bold and cunning innovators who adapted the Chinese language to a world defined by the West and its alphabet: the exiled reformer who risked a death sentence to advocate for Mandarin as a national language, the Chinese Muslim poet who laid the groundwork for Chairman Mao's phonetic writing system, the imprisoned computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a tea cup, among others. Without the advances they enabled, China might never have become the dominating force we know today. The revolution of the Chinese script is just as breathtaking as China's transformation into a capitalist juggernaut, in large part because those linguistic innovations literally enabled China's reinvention. With larger-than-life characters and an unexpected perspective on the major events of China's tumultuous twentieth century, Tsu reveals how language is both a technology to be perfected and a subtle yet potent power to be exercised and expanded"-- Provided by publisher.

ISBN:

0735214727
9780735214729

OCLC:

(OCoLC)1246726702

LCCN:

2021017006

Locations:

USUX851 -- Iowa State University - Parks Library (Ames)

BOPG851 -- Ames Public Library (Ames)

GBPF771 -- Ankeny Kirkendall Public Library (Ankeny)

YAPC771 -- Bondurant Community Library (Bondurant)

TYPH572 -- Cedar Rapids Public Library (Cedar Rapids)

XXPH787 -- Council Bluffs Public Library (Council Bluffs)

TDPH826 -- Davenport Public Library (Davenport)

BAPH771 -- Des Moines Public Library (Des Moines)

FXPH314 -- Carnegie-Stout Public Library (Dubuque)

CAPH522 -- Iowa City Public Library (Iowa City)

OVUX522 -- University of Iowa Libraries (Iowa City)

CPPC926 -- Kalona Public Library (Kalona)

GAAX314 -- Northeast Iowa Community College Library - Peosta (Peosta)