Kingdom of characters : the language revolution that made China modern
(Book)

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Published
New York : Riverhead, [2022]., , ©2022.
Physical Desc
xix, 314 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Status
Okemos - Non-Fiction
495.111 Tsu
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Published
New York : Riverhead, [2022]., , ©2022.
Format
Book
Language
English

Notes

Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 283-304) and index.
Description
"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." --book jacket

Citations

APA Citation, 7th Edition (style guide)

Tsu, J. (2022). Kingdom of characters: the language revolution that made China modern . Riverhead.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation, 17th Edition (style guide)

Tsu, Jing. 2022. Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern. Riverhead.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities (Notes and Bibliography) Citation, 17th Edition (style guide)

Tsu, Jing. Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern Riverhead, 2022.

MLA Citation, 9th Edition (style guide)

Tsu, Jing. Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern Riverhead, 2022.

Note! Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy. Citation formats are based on standards as of August 2021.

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