The Chinese character: handwriting between utility and identity in twentieth-century China

ABSTRACT

In China, unlike in many of the other cases treated in this special issue, it would seem that the standard style of writing by hand did not undergo any significant changes over the course of the twentieth century. Accordingly, the development of everyday Chinese handwriting has not been studied much. This article, however, shows that subtle yet significant changes occurred in both handwriting and the teaching of handwriting. Those changes were part and parcel of China’s twentieth-century quest for identity in a changing world. By analysing curricula and handwriting manuals from the 1900s to the 1980s, I demonstrate how, within a standard framework of “good” handwriting inherited from Imperial China, economic, societal, and nationalist considerations of the Republican, Maoist, and reform-era regimes caused the emphasis to shift back and forth between speed, down-to-earth pragmatism, and aesthetics – or, in other words, between utility and identity. Even within one given standard style of handwriting, therefore, seemingly minor shifts can tell us a lot about larger political and economic developments. To provide some background, I also briefly refer to the debates and measures regarding the abandonment or simplification of Chinese characters during the first half of the twentieth century.