This study explores the evidence for Chinese writing in the late Neolithic (3500-2000 BCE) and early Bronze Age (2000-1250 BCE) periods. Chinese writing is often said to have begun with little incubation during the late Shang period (c. 1300-1045 BCE) in the middle-lower Yellow River Valley area as a sudden independent invention. This explanation runs counter to evidence from Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Mesoamerica that shows that independent developments of writing generally undergo a protracted evolution. It also ignores archaeological data from the Chinese Neolithic and early Bronze Age that reveals the existence of signs comparable to Shang characters. Paola Demattè takes this data into account to address the issue of what writing is, and when, why, and how it develops, by employing a theory of writing that does not privilege language as a prime mover. It focuses instead on visual systems of communication as well as ideological and socio-economic developments as key elements that promote the eventual development of writing. To understand the processes that led to primary developments of writing, The Origins of Chinese Writing draws from the latest research on the early writing systems of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Mesoamerica, and other forms of protowriting. The result is a novel and inclusive theoretical approach to the archaeological evidence, grammatological data, and textual sources, an approach that demonstrates that Chinese writing emerged out of a long process that began in the Late Neolithic and continued during the Early Bronze Age.

How Chinese characters triumphed over the QWERTY keyboard and laid the foundation for China's information technology successes today. Chinese writing is character based, the one major world script that is neither alphabetic nor syllabic. Through the years, the Chinese written language encountered presumed alphabetic universalism in the form of Morse Code, Braille, stenography, Linotype, punch cards, word processing, and other systems developed with the Latin alphabet in mind. This book is about those encounters—in particular thousands of Chinese characters versus the typewriter and its QWERTY keyboard. Thomas Mullaney describes a fascinating series of experiments, prototypes, failures, and successes in the century-long quest for a workable Chinese typewriter. The earliest Chinese typewriters, Mullaney tells us, were figments of popular imagination, sensational accounts of twelve-foot keyboards with 5,000 keys. One of the first Chinese typewriters actually constructed was invented by a Christian missionary, who organized characters by common usage (but promoted the less-common characters for “Jesus" to the common usage level). Later came typewriters manufactured for use in Chinese offices, and typewriting schools that turned out trained “typewriter girls” and “typewriter boys.” Still later was the “Double Pigeon” typewriter produced by the Shanghai Calculator and Typewriter Factory, the typewriter of choice under Mao. Clerks and secretaries in this era experimented with alternative ways of organizing characters on their tray beds, inventing an input method that was the first instance of “predictive text.” Today, after more than a century of resistance against the alphabetic, not only have Chinese characters prevailed, they form the linguistic substrate of the vibrant world of Chinese information technology. The Chinese Typewriter, not just an “object history” but grappling with broad questions of technological change and global communication, shows how this happened. A Study of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute Columbia University

The emergence and spread of literacy in ancient human society an important topic for all who study the ancient world, and the development of written Chinese is of particular interest, as modern Chinese orthography preserves logographic principles shared by its most ancient forms, making it unique among all present-day writing systems. In the past three decades, the discovery of previously unknown texts dating to the third century BCE and earlier, as well as older versions of known texts, has revolutionized the study of early Chinese writing. The long-term continuity and stability of the Chinese written language allow for this detailed study of the role literacy played in early civilization. The contributors to Writing and Literacy in Early China inquire into modes of manuscript production, the purposes for which texts were produced, and the ways in which they were actually used. By carefully evaluating current evidence and offering groundbreaking new interpretations, the book illuminates the nature of literacy for scribes and readers.

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 What does it take to reinvent a language? 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, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology. Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who reinvented the Chinese language, among them an exiled reformer who risked a death sentence to advocate for Mandarin as a national language, a Chinese-Muslim poet who laid the groundwork for Chairman Mao's phonetic writing system, and a computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup from the floor of a jail cell. Without their advances, China might never have become the dominating force we know today. 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.

Originally published in 1994 (hardcover now out of print), this volume has been reprinted in a new paperback format that will make it more attractive and affordable for use in the classroom. The work sketches with extraordinary precision the history of the Chinese writing system from the late Shang (ca. 1200 B.C.) when Chinese characters are first in evidence down to the script's standardization and codification a millennium later in the Ch'in and Han (221 B.C.-A.D. 220). Prof. Boltz takes in part a comparative approach to the origin and early structure and development of Chinese writing, suggesting that in its general principles the process was matched pari passu by the way writing first arose in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and among the Mayas (for example, that the Chinese script records the sounds of words, not ideas). The author also examines the question of why the Chinese script never became alphabetic, in spite of hints of such tendencies in the third and second centuries B.C. Kidder Smith, of Bowdoin College, said of the original publication: "... this book will be highly valued by anyone concerned with the relationships of language to writing, and should become the point of reference for all discussions of these questions as they pertain to ancient Chinese" (Religious Studies Review Vol. 21, No. 4, October 1995).

In this brisk and accessible history, sinologist Thomas O. Höllmann explains the development of the Chinese writing system and its importance in literature, religion, art, and other aspects of culture. Spanning the earliest epigraphs and oracle bones to writing and texting on computers and mobile phones today, Chinese Script is a wide-ranging and versatile introduction to the complexity and beauty of written text and calligraphy in the Chinese world. Höllmann delves into the origins of Chinese script and its social and political meanings across millennia of history. He recounts the social history of the writing system; written and printed texts; and the use of writing materials such as paper, silk, ink, brush, and printing techniques. The book sheds light on the changing role of literacy and education; the politics of orthographic reform; and the relationship of Chinese writing to non-Han Chinese languages and cultures. Höllmann explains the inherent complexity of Chinese script, demonstrating why written Chinese expresses meaning differently than oral language and the subtleties of the relationship between spoken word and written text. He explores calligraphy as an art, the early letter press, and other ways of visually representing Chinese languages. Chinese Script also provides handy illustrations of the concepts discussed, showing how ideographs function and ways to decipher them visually.