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When a Word is Worth a Thousand Pictures
At one point in China's past, the average man worked the fields, and his idea of good luck consisted of the following: a loving woman and a bowl of rice under a wooden roof. How do we know this? It's all recorded in the Chinese written character for "fortune." Unlike English and other Western languages, which use phonetic alphabets to spell words out, Chinese uses "ideograms" -- "little pictures" that signify both sound and meaning. This feature of written Chinese has served poets and artists well for centuries. Software developers haven't been so lucky.
Ink Blots
Many Chinese calligraphers are high-paid celebrities, whose brushworks appear in everything from company signs to digital fonts. Candide visited one such hired hand and asked him to explain China's love of letters.
The Qwerty Conundrum
China is well into its own computer revolution. But what it really needs is a keyboard revolution.
Chinese Character Decoder
If you're still clueless about China's written language, come inside for a character building exercise.
From Founts to Fonts
In a society where longhand is regarded not only as a high art, but as the repository of traditional values, the computer may be a menacingly pragmatic phenomenon. Candide spoke to Chinese software expert and computer scientist Wang Xuan about the future of written Chinese in the coming digital age.
Made in China
