Mobile phones and computer typing have replaced the writing strokes of Chinese characters. Many people in China need to jot down a few words before they realize that they don't know how to write them.
After graduating from high school, Maslon went to London to study photography for three years, and then bought his first computer. Since then, he has gradually forgotten Chinese writing.
Nowadays, it is difficult for the 30-year-old fashion photographer to write in his mother tongue. One day, he wanted to write a shopping list and suddenly found that he forgot to write "shampoo" in Chinese characters.
He is sending a computer to the Apple Computer Store in Beijing for repair. He looked up from the iPhone and said, "Inevitably, we will forget Chinese characters. Unless we spend a few hours practicing writing every week, who has the time? "
This is a new form of illiteracy, or more accurately, dysgraphia, and it is unique to China. The source of the disease is a place similar to Apple's computer store, which is built for computer technology enthusiasts in China.
Typical victims are people like Maslan, wearing striped T-shirts, shorts and flip-flops, who look like Ralph, a famous clothing brand? The hero in Ralph Lauren's advertisement is young, rich and well-educated.
The more technological products people have, such as mobile phones, smart phones and computers, the less chance they have to write Chinese characters by hand. No matter on computers or mobile phones, most people in China use Hanyu Pinyin, which is a common Roman Pinyin. With presto mobile phone software, people can input Chinese characters. Don't worry, don't use a pen, don't use a pen, don't use a brush to grind ink.
"People don't write any Chinese characters by hand, except their names and addresses," Maslang admitted.
Almost everyone you meet in China admits that their memory is declining, just like a state with Alzheimer's disease. When the hand holding the pen tried to write on the paper, there was an awkward pause. These words were learned as a child and silently repeated many times as a child.
According to a poll conducted by China Youth Daily in April this year, among 2,072 voters, 83% admitted that they had difficulty in writing, which was so common that it became a proper term: forgetting words when writing.
Jing Cheng, a freshman in grade 18, said, "One day I planned to write a note. When I wrote the word' goodbye', I was a little slow, because I was not sure whether I had written the word' again' correctly."
To some extent, similar problems exist all over the world. People are increasingly relying on technology rather than memory, which is similar to outsourcing brain functions. Many papers have raised this question: Have computers and the Internet destroyed human intelligence?
The situation in China has risen to the height of cultural crisis, because Chinese characters can better represent the epitome of thousands of years of traditional life than other characters.
Chinese characters are the oldest writing system in the world, which has been used ever since. The Chinese characters used today can be traced back to hieroglyphics carved on tortoise shells 200 years ago BC/KLOC-0.
Although Mao Zedong instructed to simplify many Chinese characters in 1960s and 1950s to improve the literacy rate, children in China still spend a lot of time memorizing and repeating Chinese characters. /kloc-Before the age of 0/5, students will practice calligraphy for 4 to 5 hours every day and write at least 3,000 Chinese characters in 9 years.
However, in China culture, writing is not only for communication, but also an artistic and spiritual exercise. Many people think that calligraphy can help to concentrate, prolong life and even improve martial arts skills.
"These Chinese characters exist in the soul of everyone in China," said Wang, a 38-year-old calligraphy teacher from Harbin, who was browsing the books on the shelves in the bookstore on Liulichang Street. There are many shops in the glass factory selling brushes, inkstones, rubbings, scrolls and antiques. "China must rely on words to maintain its uniqueness. Writing is our cultural heritage. The computer is just a tool. "
A man in white outside the shop is writing with water on the road. What he uses to write looks more like a sponge mop than a brush. "It's my hobby," said Jiazhong Wang, 4 1 year-old, who wrote "Spring Day is Easy" and then watched his handwriting evaporate and disappear in the scorching sun.
"China people now only care about material life. Even Japanese and Koreans practice calligraphy more than China. How can the birthplace of Chinese characters be like this? " He complained. "The government must do something. Without government intervention, people will not pay attention. "
In fact, the China government has begun to pay attention to this matter. In 2008, the Ministry of Education consulted 3,000 teachers, and found that 60% of teachers complained that students' writing ability was declining. Therefore, the Ministry of Education launched a calligraphy competition last year, with 6.5438+million participants. This pilot project aims to let more students practice calligraphy.
"Not to write beautiful calligraphy," said Yu Hong, an official in charge of the project. "We just want to help students start writing again."
The decline of handwritten Chinese characters may be more related to mobile phones than to the use of computers. People in China love texting more than people in other countries in the world, perhaps because it is not so expensive, because people in China can express more information with less words.
After the mobile phone is equipped with a stylus and a touch screen, you can write what you want to send. Many elderly people in China prefer this way. But young people are more familiar with letters and send messages in pinyin or abbreviations.
In response to this problem, educators held the first national conference last year. When discussing remedial measures, some college students are asked to write papers by hand, which may earn extra income. If students plagiarize papers, it will be more difficult to cut and paste content from the Internet.
"I told my students that I like reading their handwriting, but many of my colleagues frankly don't want to bother," said Lu, a professor at Guangxi University who attended the meeting in Nanning. "If my colleagues and the government can't take it seriously, I am worried that people's cultural level will be affected."
Many young people pay enough attention to this matter to teach themselves calligraphy.
"Preserving China culture requires great efforts. Just like protecting these hutongs. " Zhu, a 24-year-old Peking University graduate, said that she mentioned the old Beijing Hutong, which is rapidly disappearing under the pressure of demolition.
Zhu and her classmates are visiting the second-hand bookstore in Liulichang and want to buy some calligraphy books. She estimated that she had forgotten 20% of the Chinese characters she knew in high school.
"But it's not a big problem," she said. "If I don't know a word, I'll check it with my mobile phone."
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