Handwritten Chinese characters fading away
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The growing popularity of computers, cell phones and printers, have seen handwritten Chinese characters gradually disappearing from the daily life of Chinese people, especially among the younger ones. A recent survey done by China Youth Daily showed 83 percent of the respondents have experienced forgetting how to write a Chinese character when given a pen.
"If we can hand in our home work by computer documents, then who will bother to write with their hands," a college student named Mei Zhu from Hubei province said.
"Hand writings are slow and time-consuming, while with computers we can just copy and paste," Mei said.
Out of the 2072 respondents surveyed, only 25.7 percent said they have ample opportunity to do handwrite their characters in their every day life; 74.2 percent said the opportunity for them was not as many, while a 23.6 percent surveyed said the chances were fewer; 4.4 percent said they seldom handwrite Chinese characters.
"With more than 10 files to be signed each day, I can write pretty good of my own signature," said Li Wenyan, a project manager of a Shenzhen-based company. "But except for my signature, my hand writing on other characters is poor," Li said.
On the 2010 New Year's Day Li received a card from a friend with several lines of hand written characters which made him moved. "It feels like the person is just in front of you when you are reading the hand writings," Li said.
A college student from a university in Wuhan said he seldom hand wrote Chinese characters in his daily life and when it came to the final examination he became hesitant on how to write some of the characters.
"I would doubt if I have written the correct character because it doesn't seem like what it should be after I write one," he said.
"The emergence of new writing methods was because of the development of technology as well as the society," said Zhang Yongqing, deputy head of the School of Literary Studies in Beijing-based Renmin University of China.
"Before going to college, students do a lot of hand writing," said Zhang, who thought college is where hand writing starts to fade away.
"Hand writing will not disappear," Zhang said, adding that it is a trend for hand writings not to take the dominant place.
Ink hand written characters may be seen as an art in the future just like what we see brush writings now, Zhang said.
"Hand writing is an art itself and Chinese people should not abandon it," said Mu Yujie, a calligraphy teacher in Heilongjiang province.
Schools should organize calligraphy contests to cultivate students' interests in handwritten characters, according to Mu. "Practicing hand writing can make a person focus his (or her) attention and is good for the person's personality," Mu said.
