…Lee, who came to the U.S. from Taiwan in the 1980s, said she resented Lim’s characterization of traditional script as obsolete. “Chinese characters are so beautiful, why would you give that up?” she said. “How could 5,000 years of history go away that easily?”

Simplified characters were introduced in the 1950s by the Chinese communist regime to improve literacy rates among the country’s mostly rural population.

At the time, anti-communist politicians and refugees fled and settled in Taiwan, where they continued the use of traditional script.

Before diplomatic relations were established between the United States and China in the 1970s, the traditional form was commonly taught here. To switch to the simplified form says something about Taiwan’s place in the world and who speaks on behalf of Chinese culture, said David Lee, past president of the Arcadia Chinese Assn.

“In the heart of Taiwan, it’s a crisis because the Taiwanese feel they are so small, there’s nothing they can compete with China, not militarily, not with population,” Lee said. “But if there’s something they can . . . insist upon, it’s culture and the language. And script is part of the culture.”

Personally I have invested all my time into learning simplified text, and even though I am mostly still illiterate in this country, it is always an ironic relief to see Mainland China’s 简体字。 Only here am I ever able to use what I’ve learned – not in Taiwan, not in Hong Kong, and not even in any Chinese community or establishment anywhere in America. This feeling of linguistic isolation really gets to me when I look at menus and signs written in Traditional script in America, as if even despite my best efforts I never will broach even the slightest bit back into that cultural heritage.

Even when I passed the immigration and customs border from Shenzhen to Hong Kong, I remember breathing in a warm feeling of recognition and belonging when I saw the sign “Welcome to Hong Kong” hanging from the bridge awning – and then breathing it out in a sigh of disappointment when I saw it repeated in Traditional script underneath. Chinese-Americans don’t have a shared sense of community spirit yet – as evidenced by the article – and we are each different in how we relate to our heritage, but for me and the importance I place in language and the written word, this is my Chinese-American dilemma: implicit sensations of belonging and exclusion, always confusingly wrapped into each other in the same current of cross-purposes whenever I see Traditional script.

It sounds like I am a proponent of Simplified for selfish purposes. I won’t deny that, and I won’t deny Traditional its beauty or the implicit meanings and connotations that it richly holds which I won’t ever be able to understand to the same level that I can analyze an English text (sadly). But languages have turning points where they change and evolve – English itself softened its angular Teutonic inflections after the Norman conquest of England, which forced French influences upon it to such an extent that even Middle English is drastically different from Old English. And even after that, major events served to twist it even further into its modern form today, and Modern English is also proving to be very malleable.

I think I know literary scholars who would be on both sides of this argument: those calling for the preservation of the cultural richness of Traditional, and those who would be excited to see the evolution of a new dynamic iteration of language (whether or not Simplified is that, I don’t know, but it’s a change at least).

But they are always very friendly to me, in particular one older man who I often see when I’m returning home.  I sometimes chat with him after I enter, and he is very patient with my poor Chinese speaking.  But lately I feel like I’ve run out of things to talk about (difficult to expand when your vocabulary is so limited), which has made things a bit more awkward when I come home these days.  I never had this problem with taxi drivers since you could always have the same conversation over and over…but then, taxi drivers don’t return wallets.

Anyway, I saw the older guard again tonight and started chatting with him.  This quickly led to the expected conversational roadblock.  To hedge around it I stammered something about maybe one day learning how to play that game I often saw people playing, and to practice with him to alleviate his boredom.  He kindly figured out what the heck I was talking about and supplied the necessary noun: Xiangqi (象棋)!

Digression:

I have never figured out exactly what Chinese chess is. I suspect that there are multiple versions of it that are in fact all completely separate games, and often misconstrued by Westerners as all being the same thing. There is a version that I’ve seen all with only white pieces (its name is still a mystery to me). There is xiangqi, this aforementioned version that I always had in my closet at home but never mustered the courage to interpret because of the necessity to first be able to READ the pieces (they are labeled in traditional script). There is also that version that you all know made by Hasbro, with the six-pointed star and the marbles. I have a feeling that, as usual with Western misconceptions, this last version is like food from Panda Express: it bears absolutely no resemblance to nor does it originate from the real thing, but Westerners don’t know any better. (Except, confounding this is the fact that my mother used to play it, but evidently by a different set of rules than my elementary school librarians were used to, who called me out on my “incorrect” application of such. Bother.)

End of digression.

The older guard led me into the guardhouse to show me a xiangqi set that he and the other guards kept around to battle off the wuliao with. He explained to me the meanings of each labelled piece, sometimes referring to pictures in his military-interest magazine (at least I think that’s what it was; a tank was on the cover and a few generals’ portraits inside). Then he sent me off with a laugh and an extra xiangqi set to learn with!

This is kind of exciting; if I learn how to play it, I might be able to one day intersperse myself into a street gathering of old men and play with them. Or, barring that adventurousness, I could always play with the friendly guards.