Kingdom of Characters

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This masterfully researched account explores the innovators who adapted the Chinese language for the modern world, playing a crucial role in transforming China into a superpower. Just a century ago, China was a crumbling empire with literacy limited to a small elite, struggling to keep pace with Western technology. The greatest challenge lay in making the complex Chinese language—over 2,200 years old—accessible in a globalized, digital context. The narrative follows bold figures who reformed the Chinese script and its underlying value system to align with technological advancements from the telegram to smartphones. It highlights the exiled reformer who risked his life to promote Mandarin as the national language and the imprisoned engineer who developed input codes for Chinese characters. These innovators—scholars, missionaries, librarians, politicians, inventors, nationalists, and revolutionaries—recognized the urgency of their mission and its profound implications. With larger-than-life characters and a gripping story, this account provides a unique perspective on one of the most significant transformations of the twentieth century.