中文 Literacy Speedrun IV: Child's Scrawl
The English language contains twenty six letters. By age 8 a Chinese schoolkid can write a thousand characters. Children learn these dense symbols before the development of fine motor control. It is not until puberty that their handwriting settles into personalized form.
Starting to read was a struggle rooted in a belief the material was below me. Writing, by contrast, was always a joy. Despite severely lacking neuroplasticity, I backfilled endless days of learning with the advantage of fully functional fingers.
It surprised me that I couldn't put the pen down - I had optimized the remainder of my process with a psychotic efficiency, yet ink to paper was taking up two-thirds of my time. The inner child fought with pen to escape a calcified shell of pragmatism.
In my head, the strokes are Legos in a set. I am amused when I draw four boxes in a row, but the results are crude and blocky. I wonder how many years it will take for my writing to be beautiful.
My partner kindly offers corrections. "Support" is the basis of a strong character. The character must give a sensation of self-standing.
"Balance" is the distribution of characters within halves and thirds. The visual weight of components must be the same, not necessarily their absolute size.
"Symmetry" is not absolute. The horizontal components of ostensibly symmetric characters may extrude outwards to preserve support and balance. There is an inner box and an outer box.
I skim a calligraphy textbook with cursive exercises. I am fascinated. I scribble all over my notebook.
Angered at my slowness halfway through a session, I switch to cursive. Strokes are uncontrolled and characters flail into each other. The result is an abject heap of trash.
I try again. Relative to standard script, I am simultaneously uglier and slower in cursive. I attempt to snap my pen; it creaks to taunt me but doesn't break. I throw the pen at the ground. It still works, but the line loses some of its thickness. I keep writing.
I give up and simply write as fast as I can. Gel skips across the page to produce abstract art.
Eventually, I slow down. A hint of fluid expression has entered my pen. It is garbage, but my garbage.
Why did I learn to handwrite at all? Two reasons.
The first was a stubborn insistence on doing things right as people stop caring about them (see: blogging). Handwriting is already dying among Chinese youth, despite China's best efforts to mandate paper-based literacy. Typing characters is ten times faster.
The second was an inheritance of millennia. It was enormously cool to be writing the same characters as some ancient bigwig. The Wus of the past were kings and scholars! My ballpoint facsimile was the only tribute I could give.
I don't know what drove me more: hubris or reverence. I don't care.
The final post, flying to small-town China: