Annual Chinese Character Selection: Chinese Character Culture and New Folk Customs

【Language Forum】

It's the end of the year when Chinese characters are selected for the year. This event has long become a cultural event in the Chinese character cultural circle.

The activities of other countries in the Chinese character culture circle are vivid and colorful, and the selection in my country is in full swing, and as the activities spread to different industries and regions in a relatively fixed form, the selection of Chinese characters has gradually evolved into a new cultural folklore, with a strong summary The symbolic meaning of the past, looking ahead, and self-motivation.

The Folk Custom Features of the Annual Chinese Character Selection

　　To judge whether a kind of folk cultural phenomenon belongs to the new folk custom, the existing folklore research has given a rich definition standard, and the following aspects are indispensable: collective, inheritance, spread, stability and variability.

We can use this to observe the annual selection of Chinese characters and explore the characteristics of folk customs.

　　High attention and strong participation.

The annual Chinese character selection has a relatively fixed time. It is generally launched in November each year and announced in mid-to-late December. It also covers many countries, regions, and industries in the Chinese character cultural circle. It has a large number of participants. It is a national cultural phenomenon. The degree of recognition is very high.

In 2019, the "Chinese Inventory" in China received thousands of recommended words from netizens, with a total of more than 350 million followers.

　　The tradition is deep and passed down for many years.

This kind of inheritance is not only reflected in the continuation of the activity itself over the years, but also in the inheritance and development of traditional Chinese character culture.

The annual selection of Chinese characters can be traced back to the 1995 "Chinese Characters of the Year" selection organized by the Japan Kanji Proficiency Test Association. In 2020, the word selected in Japan is "secret", which is related to "confined spaces, dense crowds, and close contact."

my country's National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center and other institutions have launched the annual "Chinese Inventory" in 2006, and the top five candidates selected this year are "Anti, Min, Cloud, Epidemic, and An".

In addition, Malaysia, Singapore and other countries as well as my country's Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau regions have also begun to hold annual Chinese character selection.

The reason why this annual cultural feast of the Chinese character culture circle has such an amazing cohesion, there are many vivid forms of presentation, it is inseparable from its profound traditional Chinese character culture.

It can be said that the annual selection of Chinese characters is a new flower spawned by Chinese character folklore traditions, new technologies and new media.

　　Strong expansion and wide coverage.

On the one hand, the annual selection of Chinese characters covers many countries and regions in the Chinese character cultural circle, and even extends beyond the Chinese character cultural circle, such as the "French Chinese Character of the Year" launched by the European Chinese Radio Station.

On the other hand, the domestic annual Chinese character selection has also expanded to many provinces, cities, industries and media, and has begun to pay attention to different groups and individuals, such as the annual Chinese character selection of Chinese companies, the annual Chinese character selection of Shandong Province, and the annual Chinese character selection of all media.

At the same time, the annual Chinese character has also become a relatively fixed word or phrase, and a self-summing expression.

Propositional essays or essay activities under the name "My Chinese Characters of the Year" frequently appear to guide young people to pay attention to social language life, learn self-reflection and self-growth.

　　Diversified development tends to generalization.

The annual selection of Chinese characters develops interactively amidst stability and variation. A stable cultural core and colorful presentation forms coexist, showing diversified characteristics and generalization trends.

Various activities have relatively fixed procedures, and they are constantly innovating and heating up.

In recent years, the "Chinese Inventory" has increased the use of short videos to publish words and tell stories; some activities have also seen the integration of the annual Chinese character selection with the cultural and folk activities of the industry or region, such as the 2018 "Belt and Road" annual Chinese character release The ceremony was combined with the traditional cultural activities of Shaanxi Baishuiguyu Sacrificial Cangsheng.

The core of new folklore is traditional culture

　　From a new word to a cultural phenomenon, and then gradually evolving into a new folk custom, the annual Chinese characters set off a wave of participation enthusiasm, which can also be generalized to no longer hold ceremonies.

It summarizes the objects of reflection, ranging from international affairs, national politics, to industry, group development and even personal encounters. Regardless of how its manifestations change, its cultural core is unified and stable.

The annual selection of Chinese characters captured countless people’s complex moods and thoughts at the end of the year, aroused a high degree of spiritual resonance, and provided people with a unique perspective to observe social sentiment and public opinion.

　　Although it is a new form of folk culture, the spiritual core of the annual selection of Chinese characters is deeply rooted in the cultural traditions of Chinese characters, and has a cultural and psychological foundation that has been widely recognized.

　　The cultural tradition of Chinese characters originates from the Chinese character worship and Chinese character complex in Chinese traditional culture.

In the concept of animism in the early people, language and writing are often associated with certain natural phenomena and natural forces. They can cause misfortune and good for mankind, and can be used as a medium for communication between humans and gods. Even language itself is the source of misfortune and blessing.

The mystery and power of Chinese characters is awe-inspiring. It is sometimes expressed as a kind of totem worship of Chinese characters in the folk, such as the popular "Fu", "Lu", "Shou" and "Xi", various fonts of Baishou pictures, Baifutu, as well as the “unity words” such as “treasure fortune and treasure” and “golden ten thousand two” created by the people, are full of people's expectations and yearning for a better life in the future.

　　The deep motivation of the cultural tradition of Chinese characters is also people's high recognition of the philosophical thoughts, knowledge and wisdom function of writing inheritance.

At the same time, a more common cultural mentality is to regard the structural basis of words as a criterion of right or wrong or value, which is a guide for one's own actions.

For example, "Zuo Ge is Wu" and "People's Words Are Faith" recorded in "Zuo Zhuan" are the ancient gentlemen's configuration of "wu" and "xin" to promote the spirit of martial arts and the concept of honesty.

Nowadays, the popular "the structure of the character'人' is mutually supporting" also inherits this cultural tradition of Chinese characters.

Although from the professional perspective of philology, this interpretation may not be accurate, but its cultural significance has surpassed the level of ordinary text interpretation, as the so-called "culture is to teach with words."

　　The abundance of Chinese character cultural tradition depends on the characteristics of Chinese characters.

Chinese characters have multiple meanings, rich connotations and interrelatedness, and their meanings are highly generalized and abstract, which determine that the annual Chinese characters are often characters with strong meanings and a lot of room for interpretation.

For example, in recent years, the word "cloud", which has frequently appeared in various annual Chinese character candidates, has been given a meaning related to information processing, storage and sharing from the beginning to describe the cloud in a pictographic way, appearing in the "cloud". Words such as “cloud computing”, “cloud storage” and “cloud participation” vividly express the characteristics of ultra-large scale, virtualization, dynamics, and easy expansion.

It is the imagination, analogy, relevance, generalization, and extensibility presented between the internal meanings of Chinese characters that make it more than three thousand years old and new.

　　The new folklore of the annual selection of Chinese characters not only inherits and promotes the cultural traditions of Chinese characters, but also gradually demonstrates its profound cultural value to contemporary society. It not only engraves the common cultural memory of the Chinese nation, but also opens up our vision and minds. The cultural circle has more resonance.

I look forward to the future annual selection of Chinese characters with a broader cultural vision and deeper cultural responsibility, better inheriting the excellent traditional Chinese culture, and writing the chronicles of the era more profoundly.

(Author: Liu Ling, East China Normal University, deputy editor of Chinese characters Research and Applications Center)