Lindqvist's "China: Empire of Living Symbols"

China: Empire of Living Symbols by Cecilia Lindqvist


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Lindqvist's book, as translated by Joan Tate, is a superb learning book on Chinese characters. After having read it, I was reminded by a remark of a friend, who is Filipino Chinese, who snobbishly told me, "being able to write those characters would not actually mean much -- and that it's more important to be able to speak the language (he spoke Fookien, and I learned in subsequent talks that he really had to struggle learning to draw Chinese characters, as he was also studying Mandarin)." He was in a way, after some thinking, discouraging me, as doing so may gradually allow me to gain more access to a powerful language like that of Chinese, that's used by easily over a billion people. I was actually dumbfounded by his remark, as I was then studying Chinese character writing. I thought he would be excited hearing me talk about Chinese characters. I soon learned that there's an inherent pathway in the acquisition of wisdom and magical tools, so to speak, when you learn to draw these characters. Lindqvist's book again made me seriously consider reviewing again my lessons on Chinese characters.

Reading this book will open up windows to allow you to listen to anecdotes, watch in your mind cultural events, and begin to understand traditions that are specially true to an ancient culture as that of China. Lindqvist took extra pains in making the researches to back up her contentions on certain characters that have yet to be explained clearly how they come to be in our time. She also shared her other sources that she used to explain the characters included in the book. She studied the language at a time when the Cultural Revolution was still ongoing in the China. Having studied to learn to write at least 300 characters myself, I have been impressed by the wealth of information Lindqvist shared in her book. Reading it has made me better appreciate and understand the characters, and help me make much more sense out of them. Actually, when one is able to draw the characters, one also gets an access to reading those characters found in other languages that share the basics with the Chinese language, including Nihongo, and Korean. As students have learned before, the meanings behind the characters are basically conceptual, and they will help you understand what the characters would like to illuminate to you. Though, of course, you may not actually be able to read them correctly (which is another thing altogether), the characters will give you derived and affiliated meanings, as that is how our brain processes images we see around us. Lindqvist's work has definitely made the hardship of a student in understanding Chinese characters a lot lighter to carry, specially if you've been only used to certain ways of Western forms of writing.

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