Classical Art History

Dr Kim informed us that Chinese is a “picture language” and is totally graphic. It has 50,000 characters and is very easy to understand because the people could “get” the pictures and didn’t have to read. At some point the government simplified the language to 2500 characters. When they went to English letters, now they are down to 26 characters. He believes English is the most difficult language to learn: Chinese is efficient where English is not (witness the many uses of the word “get”). In a humorous moment, he admitted that he had been an SOB professor who decided to retire because the current generation of American students have such frustratingly poor English writing skills.

We learned the meaning of several Chinese characters like water, river, moon, and sun. The symbol for human – shown as two curved lines leaning in toward one another – represents the idea that people don’t survive alone but must depend on others to thrive. The character for man begins with the angular-shaped concept of power and adds above it a square symbol for ten mouths, showing that men should be able to feed 10 others and thus are strong and protective.

It was fascinating to hear the uniqueness of some Chinese characters and has inspired me to learn Chinese calligraphy.