Seeing the Word Tathagata

Editor's Recommendation
Zhang Dachun's characters reveal life; seeing a character is like meeting an old friend. The character for "wine," derived from the Chinese character for "you," ages and changes, yet it represents a cup of fallen flowers from youth; the character for "ice," though cold, reveals the uncontested warmth of a heart as cold as ice; the ever-present character for "spring," recalling memories of writing Spring Festival couplets, evokes deep longing for his father. Zhang Dachun's interpretations of characters reveal himself, old friends, and his entire life. He sees the origins of each character and the life memories of encountering it.
2. A single character, after a long journey, arrives before us, no longer the same as it was when it started. The imaginative forms of oracle bone inscriptions, the miraculous growth and development of cognates, the clustering of radicals and their associated groups... This fascinating journey of Chinese characters, traced back to their origins and spread out, is complemented by handwritten small-character calligraphy and character-word verification exams. When true learning begins, each individual character becomes part of classical Chinese.
3. Following the works of Lin Yutang and Liang Shiqiu, the course of Chinese characters, which has been declining in modern times, is revived. Lin Yutang introduced Chinese character culture to the West, and Liang Shiqiu wrote a column called "Correction of Characters and Words" to popularize the general knowledge of Chinese characters for readers. Following "Recognizing a Few Characters" and "The Freedom of Writing", writer Zhang Dachun continues to write stories about the origins of characters and words, using the process of recognizing characters to imagine the immersion process of cultural education, and to do his best to contribute to language education on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
4. Forty-six Chinese characters with warmth, telling the Chinese culture in Chinese characters - this book includes words and phrases: politeness, fear, bravery, hero, compassion, humor, travel, love, faith, laughter, spring, drunkenness, fat, praise, dragon, food, ghost, god, disease, stupidity, etc.
Zhang Dachun, who considered himself a non-prose writer, accepted a column for Reader's Digest six years ago. He was inspired to emulate the "Zi Ci Bian Zheng" column, previously run by his predecessor, Liang Shiqiu, by re-identifying characters and writing stories about their origins, while also contributing to the declining Chinese character culture of our time. Seeing characters is like meeting an old friend. Each of the forty-six essays in this book, "Explanation of Chinese Characters," begins with a "first triumphant encounter," describing the writer's encounters with characters in their lives. The following chapters offer explanations of the characters' forms, sounds, meanings, and phrases, extending and evolving them: "If a person is at peace, he or she need not fear the character 'fat,'" "The universe is vast within drunkenness," and "travel," the long journey of the character 'travel'... Tempered by time, characters and phrases are no longer merely textual elements in classics, history, and anthologies; they become the vivid life experiences of a generation. Writers often return to the contexts in which they first learned or applied these characters, uncovering, exploring, and remembering these words and phrases, fused with the realities of life and yet potentially lost in the wind. Life is but one journey for us; but characters carry it back countless times—as long as we are willing to read them.

2019-01-01

天地出版社

Ideal Country

316

9787545545395