Far West in the Far East: On learning Chinese characters

Ostensibly, I'm in China to learn the language. There are many other reasons for being here, but learning Mandarin gives me both a focus and a distraction, and I've found the most mental stimulation and solace in learning the characters.

Right now, I know about 150 of them. In order to read a newspaper, I'll need to know between two and three thousand, so I've a ways to go. However, I'm learning between eight and ten new ones per day, and slowly the gibberish around me is taking on form and meaning.

The repetition of writing the same characters over and over into thin-papered books with large squares meant for third-graders to practice in is oddly satisfying and meditative. Often when I close my eyes at night, characters scratch themselves onto the insides of my eyelids. I feel like they are a code that I need to crack, and indeed as I learn more of the basics I'm able to understand other characters more rapidly. .


There are many brilliant compounds that I delight in: the character for crisis, for example, is a combination of the characters for "danger" and "opportunity." Star is a combination of "sun" and "birth." Man, "strength" plus "field." Of course, for every thought-provoking compound there is an equally puzzling one: the symbol for sea is simply the character for "constant" with a water radical added on. I like to think of something poetic-sounding such as "the constant sea" to help me remember it, but how it evolved I don't know.

For now, occasionally when I walk down the street I feel like a series of lights pop on – each light a new character I understand. Pop! "Day." Pop! "Hot." Pop! "Milk" (the character for cow, plus a combo character than includes the symbol for female). It's like a scene in some grammar nerd's personal musical. Of course, there are other times when I look at the seemingly endless variety of unintelligible characters, and I feel very, very tired.