Macau Ricci Institute Public Forum: The Man Who Made China a Literate Nation
Date:
- Wednesday 11 September 2024
Venue:
- Multi-function Room in the Seminary Campus of University of St. Joseph
- 聖若瑟大學聖若瑟修院校區多功能室
Cooperation Partner:
- University of St. Joseph
Video Record:
Speaker
Mark O’Neill
Mark was born in London, England and educated at Marlborough College and New College, Oxford. He worked in Washington D.C., Manchester and Belfast before moving to Asia in 1978. He has lived here ever since. After a long journalistic career, in 2006 he turned to writing books and has completed 12 so far in English. Seven have been translated into traditional Chinese and three into simplified Chinese. He speaks French, Mandarin, Cantonese and Japanese and lives in Hong Kong with his wife.
Introduction
Zhou Youguang (漢語拼音之父周有光) is the scholar who invented pinyin, a system of romanisation for Chinese characters Since 1958, Chinese primary school students have learnt pinyin, before they learn characters. Thanks to him, one billion Chinese have become literate – the greatest contribution by a linguist in history. After an extraordinary life, he died in January 2017 at the age of 111 years. He had several lives – a banker in Shanghai, New York and London: supplying food and textiles for the army and ordinary people during World War Two: after 1949, a linguist. He lived through the campaigns of the Maoist period, spending 28 months in a labour camp in west China. He wrote 49 books, many critical of the Soviet Union, the Soviet model used in China and of Mao Zedong. In the last 20 years of his life, he was one of the few intellectuals in China willing to speak the truth in public. He lived so long thanks to an innate optimism, intellectual curiosity about everything and a Buddhist-like humility to see himself and his belongings as of little value.
https://www.mark-oneill.com/china_literate_nation/
