Jing Tsu
James Jiang reviews 'Kingdom of Characters: A tale of language, obsession, and genius in modern China' by Jing Tsu
James Jiang
Monday, 23 May 2022
Picture, poem, or puzzle? The Chinese written character has been one of the most enduring obstacles to and catalysts for intercultural appreciation. When, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, the German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel wanted to demonstrate the relative backwardness of Oriental thought, he could find no better exhibit than the form of its writing. Attached as it was to ‘the sensuous image’, the putatively pictographic Chinese character forfeited access to the conceptual abstraction that afforded European thinkers their passports to the ‘free, ideal realm of Spirit’.
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Published in
June 2022, no. 443