Customer Reviews

Origins Chinese Characters

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I cannot begin to express how thankful I am that my first semester reading teacher at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou introduced me to this reference source. She was using it in her own doctoral level Chinese language studies at Zhejiang University and showed it to me when I expressed my interest and need to understand the characters that I was learning in order to fully assimilate them into my memory. As an older student with less aptitude for rote memorization this was essential to my success.
Wang Hongyuan's text's content is organized by domains of human life (man, nature, hunting and agriculture, craftsmanship, etc.) that the concepts described by the Chinese characters relate to. It's a bit awkward at first for the western mind, oriented to linear alphabetical organization, to follow this method of organization; but since the written Chinese language developed around these domains, expressed as radicals, it's really a very logical and helpful way to organize this text. It allows the reader to view nearby entries which are related to the one being researched and develop a broader understanding of the character being studied and its place in related language. I found it to be quite an enjoyable book to use and selfishly wished that it could have contained even more characters to enjoy reading about. The book has two indices, one using pinyin and characters for each entry, and the other using English.
Each entry contains an incredible amount of helpful information if you take the time to look and explore it. In addition to the English explanation of the origin of the pictograph/character throughout thousands of years of history, related characters are presented which also use the same main component; but with other initial radical components. By using The Origins of Chinese Characters in conjunction with other less serious academic references it was possible to research and understand a fairly high percentage of the characters that I was exposed to in my two years of full-time Chinese language studies at Zhejiang University. Thank you Teacher Wang!

Wang's book is bilingual, with brief English and simplified Chinese explanations which are often terse and unsatisfactory, stating what a character represents but with no further explanation. Some of his explanations follow conclusions widely accepted by modern etymologists, while others appear to be this layman's own, unsupported theories. But it IS very interesting to see the broad range of historical forms in facsimile for each of 500 characters, which even without adequate explanation, elucidates the variety of forms at each stage of development, from oracle bones onward. Perhaps the strongest point of this book is that Wang does not merely select one form from each period, but rather, reproduces a number of forms, where appropriate, such as during the Zhou dynasty bronze script period, when a variety of forms coexisted. This is valuable, because other books which only choose one form give the misleading impression of uniformity.

Wang, who lacks an academic background in etymology, avoids dealing with competing explanations, choosing his own favorites instead, and avoiding etymologically difficult characters. The pinyin and English indices are a welcome step forward which all authors of similar books should emulate, but unfortunately, his suffer from omissions, such as most of the numerals. The index has simplified characters only, but the etymologies in the text are usually for the traditional version, so the two are poorly matched: one must sometimes look up a simplified version in the index to find a traditional form in the text, so you have to know both. Despite its clear flaws, Wang's book is a convenient source for perusing the variety of historical structures, especially due to the lack of better books on this topic in English; and his addition of some historical illustrations such as those of Han dynasty drums which help explain a character structure is also very nice. However, this is not an entirely reliable source of etymology, and lacks both depth and comprehensiveness.

Unfortunately, there isn't much in the way of better English books on this topic on offer right now (although I'm trying hard to get some scholars to write one). For somewhat better etymology in a mass-market paperback, although still lacking in depth and references, readers might instead try Xie Guanghui's Composition of Common Chinese Characters: An Illustrated Account (Peking (sic) University Press; ISBN 7-301-03329-x; 1997).