During my Nanjing YLF trip, I just realize one simple fact that many people outside China may not be aware of: Pinyin is not Chinese.

After I explained this to my friends, they were surprised. This is different from what they thought. I am even more surprised when people tell me that they think the Pinyin (the Romanization) is Chinese itself. In case you don’t know, let me tell you more about it.

Chinese Characters and Pinyin

The Chinese characters itself are like a logo. Chinese is ideogram language. Check out this page: Chinese Characters about Chinese characters.

Pinyin is just one of the many ways to romanize the language so people at least have some idea of the pronunciation of the character. It acts as a bridge for the world to use commonly used 26 alphabetic to quote a Chinese character.

For example, someone may think my name in Chinese is Wang Jian Shuo. It is wrong. My Chinese name is 王建硕. I know it is hard for people who don’t know Chinese to read it, so we invented Pinyin to turn these characters into English style word – Wang Jian Shuo.

The Mapping

The problem is, there are 10,000 Chinese characters (the small square pictures you see on the screen), and at least 2000 to 3000 of them are commonly used in daily life. However, there are only around several hundreds of pronunciation in Chinese – even includes the tones (same pronunciation with different tones makes different sounds). With some simple calculation, you have the idea that many characters have to be mapped to exactly the same pronunciation. To make it even worse, most of the Pinyin don’t have tones printed with it, so put four different pronunciation into one.

When I am presented a name of a school (Tian Jia Xing), I said I don’t know the name. My American friends may wonder: “How come! You don’t read Chinese?” My answer was: “I do read Chinese, but Pinyin is not Chinese itself.” Since so many characters maps into the same Pinyin, it is very hard to decode it and get back to its original characters.

Just give you a quick example about the mapping.

My last name is Wang. However, look at how many characters reads exactly as Wang:

网

王

往

旺

望

忘

汪

亡

妄

枉

罔

惘

These are just some samples of the 50+ characters mapping to Wang.

So, Pinyin is not Chinese at all.

This is a very interesting topic we covered in this Young Leaders Forum. When we talk about whether it is appropriate to spend more on art when world poverty or world hunger is not solved. This was among the hottest debate we had.

Two Sides of the Question

One opinion was, we should pay attention to world poverty first. There are still people starving, or there are still children dieing because of lack of medical assistance. What is the point to spend the money in art. The extreme statement can be: Spend a dollar on piano may kill the hope to save a child’s life.

The other side of the argument is, the importance of art and others (like space technology) is as important as solving the other problems. Government should have a balanced budget spent on all different areas.

My Two Cents

I lean toward the second opinion. There is a Chinese saying:

If you wait for being rich before you help, you will never be able to help;

If you wait for spare time to read, you will never be able to read

待有余而济人，则永无济人之日；

带有闲而读书，则永无读书之时.

That is what I am trying to say. Although we hope one day, the world, or a country or a person can be rich enough that there is nothing else to spend but to put into art, this day will never come.

There is another Chinese saying: “Don’t stop doing good deed just because it is small. 勿以善小而不为”. Although spending on art does not seem as noble as spending on saving people’s life, it is good deed and we should do it.

I also face the same question in daily life. When I tried to save a cat, someone pointed finger to me and said “Why bother care about a cat while some human being is still hungry”. When I tried to help people in hunger, someone may say “You should spend to help people’s life”. The “more noble” thing is endless. We should not criticize anyone from doing any good thing – anyway, it is the same kind of people who save both cats and human. If someone does not care about cats, it is more likely that he/she does not care about human.

What J.F. Kennedy Said about This

I searched my photo album, and found another sentence I took on the wall of J.F. Kennedy Center for Performing Art.

Photograph by Jian Shuo Wang in 2004

It reads:

There is a connection, hard to explain logically but easy to feel, between achievement in public life and progress in the arts. The age of Pericles was also the age of Lorenzo De Medici was the age of Elizabeth also the age of Shakespeare. And the new frontier for which I campaign in public life, can also be a new frontier for American art

Thanks J.F.Kennedy to put it preciously that spending a dollar in art may not always cause reducing some spending in other area. The push from art or other field to economic success may eventually complete the positive feedback loop (my major in university is automatic control), so it is not always conflicting with each other.

Hopefully, this helps to justify many of the good things artist, dramatist, conductor, musician, astronauts, even soldier is doing.

When I wrap up my Young Leaders Forum 2007, and the extension trip in Suzhou, Tongli, and Shanghai, I could not help thinking about an important question about the future of China: Are we, as a nation, afraid of grace and beauty?

Here is why I asked this question.

The Beauty of Ancient China

Yong Leaders Forum is a small group of young leaders from all the fields in U.S, and China. It is on two year term that we meet in China (odd years), and America (even years) to discuss U.S. and China relationships and other important things. I am among the 6 representatives from China this year.

The extension trip was as interesting as the main sessions. Since this is in my own country, and I tried to bring my American friends to places I love – like the mid-night tour of Tongli. Many people, especially Ashish, were amazed by the beauty of the water town. It happened again in the Humble Administrator’s Garden in Suzhou.

I am also overwhelmed (again) by the scene of old China. I started to ask the question: Why beautiful things only happens in ancient China? Where are the beautiful places we built recently? Why many building in the recent 50 years are ugly or lack-of-repair?

Suzhou Museum and Guiling Garden

Two places changed my mind. The first is Suzhou Museum. I talked about this place in another blog entry. It is a break-through. I can tell, at least, it costs lot of time to design and construct it. It is beautiful, and expensive.

The other is Guilin Garden.

Thanks for Alex Liu, YLF Fellow 2007, we had dinner in Guilin Garden. That garden was originally the private garden of Huang Jin Rong, and was turned to a public garden. A private equity investor acquired this garden and renovated it and turned it into a very nice restaurant. I was impressed how beautiful an ancient garden can be turned to a great wonder. The new owner brings life back to the gardens. All rooms are lit up, decorated with curtains and paintings. I don’t have pictures, but it gave me the impression that 1930 is back, or 1600 is back to life. The waitresses were trained for 3 months, and they also showed the best of Chinese culture – beautiful, grace, polite, and many characters I only experienced in old novels. Of cause, this does not come without cost. The renovation project costs several million USD. If you look at the history of this garden, the private beautiful garden to bad maintained public park to a decent private garden in the last 100 years seem to be a big circle that it returned to its original starting point.

Whether we should pursuit the luxury like this or not

I may be too quick or too generalized to say that people in China are afraid of beautiful things. This is obviously wrong. Look at the beautiful furnitures, calligraphy, gardens, silk, and millions of great things we created in the past. China is so beautiful (although it takes time for us to re-discover it).

However, nowadays, people still didn’t recover from the lack of (material) resources in the 20th century. People hate luxury things (there are national wide propagandas against being luxurious). The famous saying for socks and cloths are: “New for three years; old for three years; patched and fixed, they last for another three years”. It seems to wear the same socks for 9 years is the virtue of Chinese people. So people face the moral conflict between being grace and beautiful, and saving money.

However, the reality is, much big portion of beauty comes at higher cost than those ugly one. When we have more and more resources, how should we choose? That is a question new generation of people in China has to answer.

JFK’s Answer

This reminds me of something J.F.Kennedy said. It was carved on the wall of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. I happened to took a picture of that wall:

Photograph by Jian Shuo Wang. © 2004. Taken at the south wall of J.F.Kennedy Center for Performing Art.

The first sentence reads:

I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty. — J.F.Kennedy

At the first sight, I felt puzzled. Is there anyone who is afraid of beauty? There are!

We are in a hurry, that we don’t dare to slow down to spend the time to really appreciate the beauty of our life.

We are afraid to put time and effort to make our living environment more beautiful, and healthy.

We are afraid that spending time with fine art is too luxurious.

We are afraid something is too beautiful that may be treated as outrageous.

When we talk about how many hours workers spent to create an ancient garden, we often said it in a negative way – “look at how luxurious the bad guys are!” However, we ignored the fact that really beautiful thing does take time. So the market is full of craps that a worker created in one hour, and very rare can we see some decent art work.

This brings us to the next sentence carved on the wall by J.F.Kennedy:

I am certain after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be remembered not for the victories or defeats, in battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit。 — J.F.Kennedy

It was a snowing winter in Washing D.C. Wendy and I just stepped out of the theater after watching the musical of The Thoroughly Modern Millie. At that time, we were touched by the words. He is absolutely right.

A Chinese, which is not afraid afraid of grace and beauty

I believe when people in China end the centuries of hunger, and war, we get back to the original track to pursue happiness, grace, beauty, and all kinds of great things, just as our ancestor did in the last few thousands years.

People in China were not afraid, and will not afraid of grace and beauty.