KINGDOM OF CHARACTERS

The making of modern Chinese was far from smooth. In this highly readable account,

Jing Tsu, professor of East Asian languages at Yale University, outlines the reform and standardization of the language during the

20th century, in tandem with China's wider attempts at modernization. Jing also discusses the difficulty of adapting tens of thousands of Chinese characters to Western communication systems, from Morse code to typewriters to iphones.