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Arts & Communication Esthetics in wényán and modern báihuà poetry

context. …Because the style or variety we employ is itself báihuà, which is a written adaptation of modern vernacular
part of the meaning we convey, we cannot restrict ourselves Chinese based on the Northern dialect. This transition
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to a single style without restricting our ability to implement was initiated by concerned intellectuals of the New Culture
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our communicating content.” This begs the question: what Movement (1910s – 1920s), impeded by the Second Sino–
are the characteristics associated with different styles, and Japanese War (1937 – 1945), and took momentum after
how do people appreciate and select between styles? This the founding of the nation in 1949 such that all official
paper attempts to answer these questions with an empirical correspondence was done in modern báihuà which,
investigation comparing Chinese poetry written in two since then, has been the sole form of written Chinese in
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styles of Chinese written languages: Wényán and modern China. Thousands of simplified Chinese characters were
báihuà, each with unique esthetic characteristics. promulgated, first by the Nationalist government then
the Communist government of China, since 1935. The
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The Chinese language is believed to be one of the oldest latest editions of the authoritative Xīnhuá Zìdiǎn (12 ed.)
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writing systems and perhaps the only one that has seen and Xiàndài Hànyǔ Cídiǎn (7 ed.) each contain over
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continuous use for over 3000 years. It changes over time, 13,000 characters from which an average Chinese person
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responding to the development of the Chinese society knows 3,500 – 6,500 . Along with the introduction of new
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over millennia. Since the earliest scripts of the pictorial ideas, foreign languages contributed significantly to the
graphs, Chinese has always been a morphemic and evolution of the grammatical norms of báihuà. Sentences
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mostly monosyllabic language, where a graph or Chinese in modern báihuà, for example, are comparatively much
character is the smallest meaning and grammatical unit. longer than those in wényán, partly due to the addition of
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In response to increasingly complex and wide-spread lengthy and complicated pronominal modifiers prevalent
usage of the language, Chinese characters acquired greater in texts of English, French, and Russian, enhancing
linearity and regularity of form. The great imperial precision and explicitness. However, wényán continues
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consolidation of the Qin dynasty (221 – 206 BC) unified to exist and assert its influence on modern báihuà, such
the diverse demotic transformations across geographic that the contemporary written Chinese consists of a
regions in the country, to a standardized and mandatory mixture of classical Chinese and Northern vernacular
form of script, the lìshū (隶书, “clerical/regular script”), Chinese on different proportions depending on context.
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which prioritized convenience over the pictorial nature A contemporary Chinese person recognizes a substantial
and served as the ancestor for all subsequent development amount of Chinese characters written in the clerical script
in Chinese writing. Conventionally, the literary language and its more recent forms, though as exposure to wényán
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used during the Spring and Autumn period (771 – 476 BC) decreases, they may not fully comprehend their meaning
to the end of Han dynasty (202 BC – 220) is referred to in classical texts.
as classical Chinese, which was modeled after by writers Classical written Chinese (wényán) enjoyed
in the following millennium till the end of feudalist extraordinarily flexible grammatical rules. Although
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rule. From the Tang dynasty (618 – 907 AD) to early Chinese typically follows a “subject + verb + object”
twentieth century, there has been little change to the structure, the presence of a verb is not necessary, and it
form of the official script or the writing system: wényán. is possible to have a verbless sentence. It possesses an
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Despite influence from the popular and rapidly changing adaptable word classification system, where word class
vernacular Chinese, also called the “traditional báihuà ( distinction is context-dependent, and atypical syntactic
白话)” in contrast to “modern báihuà,” wényán (文言) functions (e.g., nouns functioning as verbs, and adjectives
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or classical written Chinese was largely preserved and as adverbs) are common. There is a virtual absence
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held reverent with elements from the vernacular peeking of morphology and as a result syntactic position and
through only occasionally in formal correspondence. 4 semantic context play important roles in interpretation.
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In early 20 century, the Chinese written language The interpretation of Chinese texts must take into
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received a second major formal reformation. The Opium consideration the surface meaning of the characters or
War (1840 – 1842) marked the beginning of a series of
traumatic encounters of China with Western culture. 1 The nine-year compulsory education system ensures a
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The writing system of classical literary Chinese, due to Chinese citizen knows at least 3,500 Chinese characters by
the time he/she finishes Grade 9. According to The Table
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its difficulty and complexity, was found to be inadequate of General Standard Chinese Characters published and
in meeting the demands of the sociohistorical situations promulgated by the Ministry of Education in 2013, 6,500
of the 20 century, and required simplification for mass characters were designated as satisfying common usage in
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education and modernization. During the May Fourth publications, the compilation of dictionaries, and general
Movement (1919), wényán was fully replaced by modern information processing. 6
Volume 2 Issue 1 (2024) 2 https://doi.org/10.36922/ac.1825