Chinese characters are the cultural treasure of the Chinese nation. The character strokes show the civilization of China. Handwriting is a carrier to express the beauty of Chinese characters. Handwriting unites the shape of words together with content. It is also a kind of art, enjoying people as well as reflecting the national spirit.
According to the data, the sending volume of messages adds to more than 30 billion during the spring festival. The volume production and repeated content of blessing messages or electronic greeting cards make people boring. We all miss the disappearing handwritten greeting cards with sincerity and warmth.
Nowadays, people’s writing state has been changed: far away from the paper and pen, and close to keyboard. What’s your opinion? Let’s see some representatives’ stories and ideas.
Hai Yan, writer: We should look for the beauty of handwriting even in the digital age
I’ve written for 30 years, my manuscript of novels is no less than tens of millions of characters. Handwriting is the most skilled way for my imagination and expression. When I write something, I will go into a state of “selflessness”; words are written subconsciously by my hands. If I use a computer, I need to think about pinyin first, and then find the position of the letters; it’s hard to form coherent thinking.
Chinese character writing is really different with spelling letters. People who make contact with Chinese characters are frequently deeply influenced by culture tradition. They will have a unique feel and love for Chinese characters, and will taste profound artistic conception from the structure and shape of every character.
Keeping the habit of handwriting is keeping our love of Chinese characters and respect to our ancestors, Hai Yan said.
Huang Xuejun, vice-manager of word stock sales department of Peking University Founder Company Limited: Handwriting is the basis of word stock
Even though word stock is doing the job of writing electronization, the foundation is handwriting. Handwriting is the creativity source of word stock. When seeing the handwriting of somebody guided into procedure, we will find the importance of handwriting. If we give up personal handwriting, the development of word stock would fall into the ditch.
Wang Qin, working for Culture and Science Park of Renmin University of China: The efficiency of computer input is more considerable
Why do we use more typewriting than handwriting in our work? My job needs a lot of e-text on the internet, and many times’ adjustment or edition. If I do these on paper, it will be inconvenient and waste. So I am useful for typewriting.
We won’t care about the details of every word when we use the keyboard, so we can’t remember the exact details of words, especially the complex words. But we can’t say it’s the error of the computer input method. I think it’s just a catalyst rather than a ring leader; the origin is our handwriting practice in early years.
Lu Jianming, professor of the Department of Chinese Language and Literature of Peking University
During the network era, writing Chinese characters has a new method. “Word processing” has been determined as two kinds of input methods: form yards and pinyin yards. From yards’ split of the Chinese character structure and pinyin yards input both cause people to forget the exact details of the words. But we still write Chinese characters even the methods and tools of writing changed. If we could develop computer input methods to be more useful, the Chinese character writing culture would improve. In fact, the end production of typewriting is “pure” Chinese character; we also have various character styles to choose. Thus, we can output all kinds of typefaces, which is unmatched by handwriting.
Translated by Chai limeng
Editor: Wen Yi
Source: china.com.cn
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