The Chinese Typewriter

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Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262536102
Total Pages : 501 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis The Chinese Typewriter by : Thomas S. Mullaney

Download or read book The Chinese Typewriter written by Thomas S. Mullaney and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-10-09 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Chinese characters triumphed over the QWERTY keyboard and laid the foundation for China's information technology successes today. Chinese writing is character based, the one major world script that is neither alphabetic nor syllabic. Through the years, the Chinese written language encountered presumed alphabetic universalism in the form of Morse Code, Braille, stenography, Linotype, punch cards, word processing, and other systems developed with the Latin alphabet in mind. This book is about those encounters—in particular thousands of Chinese characters versus the typewriter and its QWERTY keyboard. Thomas Mullaney describes a fascinating series of experiments, prototypes, failures, and successes in the century-long quest for a workable Chinese typewriter. The earliest Chinese typewriters, Mullaney tells us, were figments of popular imagination, sensational accounts of twelve-foot keyboards with 5,000 keys. One of the first Chinese typewriters actually constructed was invented by a Christian missionary, who organized characters by common usage (but promoted the less-common characters for “Jesus" to the common usage level). Later came typewriters manufactured for use in Chinese offices, and typewriting schools that turned out trained “typewriter girls” and “typewriter boys.” Still later was the “Double Pigeon” typewriter produced by the Shanghai Calculator and Typewriter Factory, the typewriter of choice under Mao. Clerks and secretaries in this era experimented with alternative ways of organizing characters on their tray beds, inventing an input method that was the first instance of “predictive text.” Today, after more than a century of resistance against the alphabetic, not only have Chinese characters prevailed, they form the linguistic substrate of the vibrant world of Chinese information technology. The Chinese Typewriter, not just an “object history” but grappling with broad questions of technological change and global communication, shows how this happened. A Study of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute Columbia University

Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist)

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0735214735
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (352 download)

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Book Synopsis Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist) by : Jing Tsu

Download or read book Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist) written by Jing Tsu and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2023-01-17 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 What does it take to reinvent a language? After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology. Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who reinvented the Chinese language, among them an exiled reformer who risked a death sentence to advocate for Mandarin as a national language, a Chinese-Muslim poet who laid the groundwork for Chairman Mao's phonetic writing system, and a computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup from the floor of a jail cell. Without their advances, China might never have become the dominating force we know today. With larger-than-life characters and an unexpected perspective on the major events of China’s tumultuous twentieth century, Tsu reveals how language is both a technology to be perfected and a subtle, yet potent, power to be exercised and expanded.

Sound and Script in Chinese Diaspora

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Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674055403
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Sound and Script in Chinese Diaspora by : Associate Professor Jing Tsu

Download or read book Sound and Script in Chinese Diaspora written by Associate Professor Jing Tsu and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Native and foreign speakers, mother tongues and national languages have jostled for distinction throughout the modern period. The fight for global dominance between the English and Chinese languages opens into historical battles over the control of the medium through standardization, technology, bilingualism, pronunciation, and literature in the Sinophone world. Encounters between languages, as well as the internal tensions between Mandarin and other Chinese dialects, present a dynamic, interconnected picture of languages on the move. --

Your Computer Is on Fire

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Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 026253973X
Total Pages : 417 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Your Computer Is on Fire by : Thomas S. Mullaney

Download or read book Your Computer Is on Fire written by Thomas S. Mullaney and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Technology scholars declare an emergency: attention must be paid to the inequality, marginalization, and biases woven into our technological systems. This book sounds an alarm: we can no longer afford to be lulled into complacency by narratives of techno-utopianism, or even techno-neutrality. We should not be reassured by such soothing generalities as "human error," "virtual reality," or "the cloud." We need to realize that nothing is virtual: everything that "happens online," "virtually," or "autonomously" happens offline first, and often involves human beings whose labor is deliberately kept invisible. Everything is IRL. In Your Computer Is on Fire, technology scholars train a spotlight on the inequality, marginalization, and biases woven into our technological systems.

Coming to Terms with the Nation

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Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520262786
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (22 download)

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Book Synopsis Coming to Terms with the Nation by : Thomas Mullaney

Download or read book Coming to Terms with the Nation written by Thomas Mullaney and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studies China's "Ethnic classification project" (minzu shibie) of 1954, conducted in Yunnan province.

The Typewriter Revolution: A Typist's Companion for the 21st Century

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Author :
Publisher : The Countryman Press
ISBN 13 : 1581575874
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (815 download)

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Book Synopsis The Typewriter Revolution: A Typist's Companion for the 21st Century by : Richard Polt

Download or read book The Typewriter Revolution: A Typist's Companion for the 21st Century written by Richard Polt and published by The Countryman Press. This book was released on 2015-11-12 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The connoisseur's guide to the typewriter, entertaining and practical What do thousands of kids, makers, poets, artists, steampunks, hipsters, activists, and musicians have in common? They love typewriters—the magical, mechanical contraptions that are enjoying a surprising second life in the 21st century, striking a blow for self-reliance, privacy, and coherence against dependency, surveillance, and disintegration. The Typewriter Revolution documents the movement and provides practical advice on how to choose a typewriter, how to care for it, and what to do with it—from National Novel Writing Month to letter-writing socials, from type-ins to typewritten blogs, from custom-painted typewriters to typewriter tattoos. It celebrates the unique quality of everything typewriter, fully-illustrated with vintage photographs, postcards, manuals, and more.

Critical Han Studies

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Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520289757
Total Pages : 419 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (22 download)

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Book Synopsis Critical Han Studies by : Thomas Mullaney

Download or read book Critical Han Studies written by Thomas Mullaney and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2012-02-15 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical Han studies : introduction and prolegomenon / Thomas S. Mullaney -- Han and China. Recentering China : the Cantonese in and beyond the Han / Kevin Carrico ; On not looking Chinese : does "mixed race" decenter the Han from Chineseness? / Emma J. Teng ; "Climate's moral economy" : geography, race, and the Han in early Republican China / Zhihong Chen ; Good Han, bad Han : the moral parameters of ethnopolitics in China / Uradyn E. Bulag -- The problem of Han origins. Understanding the snowball theory of the Han nationality / Xu Jieshun ; Antiquarian as ethnographer : Han ethnicity in early China studies / Tamara T. Chin ; The Han joker in the pack : some issues of culture and identity from the Minzu literature / Nicholas Tapp -- The problem of Han formations. Hushuo : the northern other and the naming of the Han Chinese / Mark Elliot ; From subjects to Han : the rise of Han as Identity in nineteenth-century southwest China / C. Patterson Giersch ; Searching for Han : early twentieth-century narratives of Chinese origins and development / James Leibold ; Han at Minzu's edges : what critical Han studies can learn from China's "Little Tibet" / Chris Vasantkumar.

A Billion Voices

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Publisher : Penguin Group Australia
ISBN 13 : 1760143308
Total Pages : 89 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (61 download)

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Book Synopsis A Billion Voices by : David Moser

Download or read book A Billion Voices written by David Moser and published by Penguin Group Australia. This book was released on 2016-05-23 with total page 89 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mandarin, Guoyu or Putonghua? 'Chinese' is a language known by many names, and China is a country home to many languages. Since the turn of the twentieth century linguists and politicians have been on a mission to create a common language for China. From the radical intellectuals of the May Fourth Movement, to leaders such as Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong, all fought linguistic wars to push the boundaries of language reform. Now, Internet users take the Chinese language in new and unpredictable directions. David Moser tells the remarkable story of China's language unification agenda and its controversial relationship with modern politics, challenging our conceptions of what it means to speak and be Chinese. 'If you want to know what the language situation of China is on the ground and in the trenches, and you only have time to read one book, this is it. A veritable tour de force, in just a little over a hundred pages, David Moser has filled this brilliant volume with linguistic, political, historical, and cultural data that are both reliable and enlightening. Written with captivating wit and exacting expertise, A Billion Voices is a masterpiece of clear thinking and incisive exposition.' Victor H. Mair, American sinologist, professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania and author of The Columbia History of Chinese Literature 'David Moser explains the complex aspects of Putonghua against the backdrop of history, delivering the information with authority and simplicity in a style accessible both to speakers of Chinese and those who are simply fascinated by the language. All of the questions that people have asked me about Chinese over the years, and more, are answered in this book. The history of Putonghua and the vital importance of creating a common language is a story David Moser brings to life in an enjoyable way.' Laszlo Montgomery, The China History Podcast

The Chinese Typewriter

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780262340779
Total Pages : 501 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (47 download)

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Book Synopsis The Chinese Typewriter by : Thomas Shawn Mullaney

Download or read book The Chinese Typewriter written by Thomas Shawn Mullaney and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Chinese characters triumphed over the QWERTY keyboard and laid the foundation for China's information technology successes today.

The Last Chinese Chef

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Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN 13 : 9780547053738
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (537 download)

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Book Synopsis The Last Chinese Chef by : Nicole Mones

Download or read book The Last Chinese Chef written by Nicole Mones and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2008 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This exhilarating story is the transporting tale of how the sensual, romantic elements of haute Chinese cuisine become the perfect ingredients to lift the troubled soul of a grieving American woman.

What's Wrong with China

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Author :
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 111921372X
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (192 download)

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Book Synopsis What's Wrong with China by : Paul Midler

Download or read book What's Wrong with China written by Paul Midler and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-11-20 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What’s Wrong with China is the most cogent, insightful and penetrating examination I have read on the paradoxes and self-deceptions of Modern China, written by someone who has lived in the country and dealt with it day to day for decades. This book will be hated by the commissars, because it is a triumph of analysis and good sense. —PAUL THEROUX I sure wish I’d read this book before heading to China—or Chinatown, for that matter. China runs on an entirely different operating system—both commercial and personal. Midler’s clear, clever analysis and illuminating, often hilarious tales foster not only understanding but respect. —MARY ROACH From the Back Cover What’s Wrong with China is the widely anticipated follow-up to Paul Midler’s Poorly Made in China, an exposé of China manufacturing practices. Applying a wider lens in this account, he reveals many of the deep problems affecting Chinese society as a whole. Once again, Midler delivers the goods by rejecting commonly held notions, breaking down old myths, and providing fresh explanations of lesser-understood cultural phenomena.

A New Literary History of Modern China

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Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674967917
Total Pages : 1033 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (749 download)

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Book Synopsis A New Literary History of Modern China by : David Der-wei Wang

Download or read book A New Literary History of Modern China written by David Der-wei Wang and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-22 with total page 1033 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring over 140 Chinese and non-Chinese contributors, this landmark volume, edited by David Der-wei Wang, explores unconventional forms as well as traditional genres, emphasizes Chinese authors’ influence on foreign writers as well as China’s receptivity to outside literary influences, and offers vibrant contrasting voices and points of view.

Walk Across the Sea

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1439132399
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis Walk Across the Sea by : Susan Fletcher

Download or read book Walk Across the Sea written by Susan Fletcher and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-10-18 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first time Eliza sees Wah Chung, he is squatting beside some rocks on the pathway to her island. Eliza's island is the one on which the lighthouse -- operated and maintained by her father -- stands, sending its beacon of safety to ships at sea. The pathway to the island is a treacherous one, engulfed by water when the tide is high, passable only when the tide is low and reveals the secret life of the sea on the rocks and in the pools that remain. Although Eliza is careful to avoid Wah Chung as he paints among the rocks (after all, he is a Chinaman), when a "sneaker wave" approaches the passage, it is Wah Chung who warns her and then rescues Eliza's goat, Parthenia, before both are swept away. It is a simple act of kindness, but one that causes Eliza to doubt many things. Are the Celestials, as the Chinese immigrants are called, such a threat to their small town? Are they really heathens, as her father claims? And what should she do when the townspeople conspire to expel these people forcibly? How will Eliza act, in the face of her father's strong beliefs and his duties as the lighthouse keeper, when Wah Chung comes to her for help in return?

A Few Planes for China

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Publisher : University Press of New England
ISBN 13 : 1512601292
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (126 download)

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Book Synopsis A Few Planes for China by : Eugenie Buchan

Download or read book A Few Planes for China written by Eugenie Buchan and published by University Press of New England. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On December 7, 1941, the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor plunged the United States into armed conflict with Japan. In the following months, the Japanese seemed unbeatable as they seized American, British, and European territory across the Pacific: the Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Dutch East Indies. Nonetheless, in those dark days, the US press began to pick up reports about a group of American mercenaries who were bringing down enemy planes over Burma and western China. The pilots quickly became known as Flying Tigers, and a legend was born. But who were these flyers for hire and how did they wind up in the British colony of Burma? The standard version of events is that in 1940 Colonel Claire Chennault went to Washington and convinced the Roosevelt administration to establish, fund, and equip covert air squadrons that could attack the Japanese in China and possibly bomb Tokyo even before a declaration of war existed between the United States and Japan. That was hardly the case: although present at its creation, Chennault did not create the American Volunteer Group. In A Few Planes for China, Eugenie Buchan draws on wide-ranging new sources to overturn seventy years of received wisdom about the genesis of the Flying Tigers. This strange experiment in airpower was accidental rather than intentional; haphazard decisions and changing threat perceptions shaped its organization and deprived it of resources. In the end it was the British - more than any American in or out of government - who got the Tigers off the ground. On the eve of Pearl Harbor, the most important man behind the Flying Tigers was not Claire Chennault but Winston Churchill.

The Power of Print in Modern China

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Author :
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231545355
Total Pages : 409 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis The Power of Print in Modern China by : Robert Culp

Download or read book The Power of Print in Modern China written by Robert Culp and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-28 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amid early twentieth-century China’s epochal shifts, a vital and prolific commercial publishing industry emerged. Recruiting late Qing literati, foreign-trained academics, and recent graduates of the modernized school system to work as authors and editors, publishers produced textbooks, reference books, book series, and reprints of classical texts in large quantities at a significant profit. Work for major publishers provided a living to many Chinese intellectuals and offered them a platform to transform Chinese cultural life. In The Power of Print in Modern China, Robert Culp explores the world of commercial publishing to offer a new perspective on modern China’s cultural transformations. Culp examines China’s largest and most influential publishing companies—Commercial Press, Zhonghua Book Company, and World Book Company—during the late Qing and Republican periods and into the early years of the People’s Republic. He reconstructs editors’ cultural activities and work lives as a lens onto the role of intellectuals in cultural change. Examining China’s distinct modes of industrial publishing, Culp explains the emergence of the modern Chinese intellectual through commercial and industrial processes rather than solely through political revolution and social movements. An original account of Chinese intellectual and cultural history as well as global book history, The Power of Print in Modern China illuminates the production of new forms of knowledge and culture in the twentieth century.

The Infernal Library

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Publisher : Henry Holt and Company
ISBN 13 : 1627793437
Total Pages : 400 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (277 download)

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Book Synopsis The Infernal Library by : Daniel Kalder

Download or read book The Infernal Library written by Daniel Kalder and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2018-03-06 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A mesmerizing study of books by despots great and small, from the familiar to the largely unknown." —The Washington Post A darkly humorous tour of "dictator literature" in the twentieth century, featuring the soul-killing prose and poetry of Hitler, Mao, and many more, which shows how books have sometimes shaped the world for the worse Since the days of the Roman Empire dictators have written books. But in the twentieth-century despots enjoyed unprecedented print runs to (literally) captive audiences. The titans of the genre—Stalin, Mussolini, and Khomeini among them—produced theoretical works, spiritual manifestos, poetry, memoirs, and even the occasional romance novel and established a literary tradition of boundless tedium that continues to this day. How did the production of literature become central to the running of regimes? What do these books reveal about the dictatorial soul? And how can books and literacy, most often viewed as inherently positive, cause immense and lasting harm? Putting daunting research to revelatory use, Daniel Kalder asks and brilliantly answers these questions. Marshalled upon the beleaguered shelves of The Infernal Library are the books and commissioned works of the century’s most notorious figures. Their words led to the deaths of millions. Their conviction in the significance of their own thoughts brooked no argument. It is perhaps no wonder then, as Kalder argues, that many dictators began their careers as writers.

Digital China's Informal Circuits

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 9780367661861
Total Pages : 150 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (618 download)

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Book Synopsis Digital China's Informal Circuits by : Elaine Jing Zhao

Download or read book Digital China's Informal Circuits written by Elaine Jing Zhao and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-09-30 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From open source cultures, piracy, to amateur media and on-demand labour, informal media activities are vibrant in circuits of cultural production, distribution, consumption and labour utilisation in China. They come in different sizes and shapes, involve multiple actors, often with transnational ties and tensions, and challenge polemic views. Why do these informal activities occur, and how do they evolve? What cultural and social consequences do they have? In what ways do they pose challenges to governance and provoke us to rethink the notion? This book engages with diverse forms of the informal and their equally diverse interactions with the formal in the broader context of the rise of digital platforms, the contingent and complicated state-market interactions, and evolving roles of users. The book provides a vivid and original account of how digital platforms navigate formal and informal boundaries at both operational and discursive levels; how enthusiastic fans, aspiring amateurs, 'ordinary' users and necessity-driven labourers become integral to the formal/informal interface; and how state and non-state actors intervene in governing the formal/informal dynamics. In doing so, the book opens up new insights into the ongoing digital transformation in China.