Few things in Chinese culture are more widely misunderstood outside of China than the Chinese language. The Chinese write very differently from us and indeed from all other literate societies in today ...

Have you ever wondered how some languages work without an alphabet? While most of us read using letters like A to Z, Chinese and Japanese follow a completely different system. Instead of spelling ...

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The late, great sinologist Simon Leys once pointed out a peculiar paradox. China is the world’s oldest surviving civilization, and yet very little material of its past remains—far less than in Europe ...