He has three names-richard sears, Slade and Uncle Chinese Characters. Richard is his real name, Slade is his Chinese name, and "Uncle Chinese Characters" is the nickname given to him by enthusiastic netizens in China in recent years. Richard said that he prefers to be called "Uncle Chinese Characters".
In 1972, at the age of 22, he left his home in the United States to learn Chinese, regardless of his parents’ objections, and bought a one-way ticket to fly to Taiwan, China alone.
In 1994, after a serious illness and four heart operations, Richard asked himself, what would you do if there were only 365 days left in your life? His answer is very firm-computerizing Shuo Wen Jie Zi. In the next seven years, he almost exhausted all his savings and hired an assistant to scan all the ancient Chinese characters in ancient books such as Shuowen Jiezi, Liushutong, Jinwen Bian and Oracle Bone Inscriptions Bian into the computer. In 2002, the "Chinese Character Resource Network" founded by Richard quietly went online and became a good helper for a few professionals interested in ancient Chinese characters and Oracle Bone Inscriptions.
In 2011, Richard and his website were accidentally discovered by netizens in China, which triggered a heated discussion in Weibo. Realizing that so many Chinese began to pay attention to himself and his website, Richard made another major choice in his life-moving to China. Tianjin, Beijing, Shanghai, Huangshan … In recent years, although he has changed his residence in China, Richard’s obsession with Chinese characters has never diminished. On his Chinese character etymology website, more than 8,000 Chinese characters have been analyzed and nearly 100,000 ancient Chinese characters have been included. For inquirers, as long as they enter the Chinese character they want to inquire on the website, they can instantly see the evolution process of this Chinese character in the long river of history-seal script, inscriptions on bronze and even the appearance of it carved on Oracle Bone Inscriptions thousands of years ago.
Now, "Uncle Chinese Characters" has another bold idea. He wants to record a video to tell the story of him and Chinese characters, and then put it on his new website to make Chinese characters not only computerized, but also "multimedia". All this can only be supported by his meager income of recording programs and giving lectures from time to time. But the 67-year-old Richard didn’t agree at all: "I never think too much. As long as my physical conditions permit, I will try my best to do it, because Chinese characters are my lifelong interest."
A serious illness arouses obsession
In Shanghai in early December, autumn is strong. In the International Chinese Teacher Research Base of East China Normal University, "Uncle Chinese Characters" is telling his stories to more than 100 college students from all over the country in fluent Chinese. They will go to Australia and New Zealand as volunteers for Chinese teachers in more than two months.
"When I was your age, I set myself the goal of learning Chinese, and I once said that I would go to Taiwan, China, but until I was forty years old, I could only speak Chinese and could not recognize Chinese characters. For us foreigners, Chinese characters are complex patterns, and it is really difficult to learn them by rote. In fact, if you study the origin of Chinese characters, you will find that there is a specific meaning and evolution process behind each Chinese character. Once you really understand these, many words will naturally be remembered. What I want to do is to collect all these materials and computerize them, so that those Chinese learners or enthusiasts who want to understand the evolution of Chinese characters can find them conveniently and quickly. " Richard explained to you his original intention of founding the Chinese Character Source Network.
Unfortunately, his ideas have not been understood by many people, even his parents who are high school teachers.
Richard’s hometown is in a conservative Christian community in Oregon, USA. In his memory, it was all white people, all English speakers and all Christians, which was really boring. In order to get rid of this "boredom" and see the world, Richard decided to learn a foreign language: "At that time, only 7% of the people in the world spoke English, but nearly 20% spoke Chinese, so I wanted to learn Chinese and go to China."
At that time, China and the United States had not yet established diplomatic relations. When they heard that their son was going to China, Richard’s parents were going mad. "At that time, my father strongly opposed it and wanted to scare me with force. As a result, I accidentally broke his hand, and my mother cried and said that she was going to commit suicide." Richard recalled. Nevertheless, he used the money he had saved for a year to "wash dishes" and bought a plane ticket to Taiwan, China in July 1972. On the day of departure, despite all kinds of reluctance, my parents went to the airport to see Richard off.
When he first arrived in Taiwan Province, Richard had only $80 on him. After settling down in a small room with a monthly rent of $17, Richard quickly found a job as an English teacher. In the next two years, he didn’t go to a Chinese school for a day, but he slowly learned Chinese conversation in his daily life. I learned from my home letter that he needed a TV to watch Chinese programs, and my father who had cancer sent money to Richard. Unfortunately, it was not long before my father died of illness.
Two years later, Richard returned to the United States to continue his college studies and got a degree in physics. After graduation, he lived in Taiwan Province for another four years, and then returned to China to study computer science at the University of Tennessee, where he got his master’s degree in 1985. After work, unwilling to be calm, he continued to travel around Asia, Europe, Africa … so he passed the age of no doubt leisurely, but the Chinese he had made up his mind to learn never reached a deeper level.
As a college student who has studied physics and computer, Richard hopes to explore the inherent laws of Chinese characters and remember them instead of memorizing "patterns". Since Shuo Wen Jie Zi, he has been consulting professional books about Oracle Bone Inscriptions, seal script, bronze inscriptions and the evolution of glyphs. Richard soon noticed that sometimes, although the same Chinese character is searched, different books give different explanations. To thoroughly understand the source of a word, it is often necessary to turn to several ancient books. But Richard is not bored, because he found that finding the initial appearance of a Chinese character, and then watching how it evolved step by step, will understand that every Chinese character is reasonable and there is a story behind it. "
In order to computerize these materials, Richard visited many experts in the study of ancient Chinese for help, but in the 1990s, most of them could not understand the necessary connection between the ancient Chinese characters engraved on bronzes and computers, and at most, they recommended some professional books to Richard.
In the summer of 1994, Richard had a heart attack. Back in the United States, he had four heart operations and three stents. Lying in the hospital bed, Richard asked himself, "What would I do if I had only 24 hours left in my life?" "I should call my friends to say goodbye." "What if there are still 40 years?" "I will probably waste 10 years first." "What if it is 365 days?" "I want to computerize Shuo Wen Jie Zi."
The network world at that time was not developed. Richard’s first consideration is to design a computer program to search and display the source materials of Chinese characters, which requires scanning all the seal characters in Shuo Wen Jie Zi into the computer. Fortunately, Richard found a job as a computer engineer in Silicon Valley at that time, which enabled him to earn enough money to pay someone to help him with the repetitive and tedious task of scanning Chinese characters. "I found Ann in Chinatown. At the age of 55, she just immigrated from China. Although she only had a junior high school education and didn’t speak a word of English, she accepted my invitation." Richard recalled.
Richard equipped Ann with computers, scanners and other equipment, taught her to use computers and input methods, and saved the scanned words into floppy disks one by one. He himself used his spare time to write programs. After 365 days, Richard, with the help of Ann, scanned nearly 100,000 Chinese characters in four tool books, such as Shuo Wen Jie Zi, into the computer. Up to now, recalling Ann, Richard is still grateful: "Without her, there would be no website for me. At first, she couldn’t understand Shuo Wen Jie Zi, but later, she became a half expert in Chinese characters. "
A "popularity" rewrites life
In 2002, Richard’s Chinese character source network was officially launched. Richard coded every glyph corresponding to more than 6,500 Chinese characters. At the same time, Richard lost his high-paying job in Silicon Valley due to the economic depression. He had to move to Tennessee and become a river manager. In his spare time, in a rented room of 10 square meters, facing this niche website with tepid traffic, Richard lived an ascetic life. The rent of the server could not be paid, so he added a donation link to the homepage of the website, asking everyone to donate to help him maintain and update the website. Even if the donation amount is only a few tens of dollars all year round, he never thought about giving up.
The turning point appeared on January 13th, 2011. That night, Richard suddenly found that his account had received more than 100 dollars in donations in just one hour. The number of hits on the website that day exceeded 600,000 times for the first time.
At this time, on the other side of the ocean in China, a netizen just introduced Richard in Weibo with sensational words: "This man’s name is Richard Sears. It took him 20 years to digitize Oracle Bone Inscriptions, Jinwen and Xiaozhuan by hand, and upload them to the Internet for everyone to use for free. This is the "stupidity" of foreigners (I guess it is the United States). How can you do this kind of national project by yourself … "
From this day on, Richard’s mailbox was "crowded". Thousands of emails drifted in like snowflakes, which made him excited: "I write back almost every day. For the first time in the email, someone called me’ Uncle Chinese Characters’. I like this title very much." Followed by countless overseas calls, Tianjin TV even sent a film crew directly to the United States to shoot a feature film for Richard. In that feature film, Richard’s "humble room" moved countless audiences. In the narrow room, except for bookshelves, desks and books, there is almost no other furnishings, even a bed. Usually, Richard sleeps directly on the floor, and the host also sits on the floor for the interview that day. Richard admits that over the years, he has exhausted his $300,000 savings saved in the previous 20 years for this website.
In 2012, Tianjin Satellite TV’s "Bo Ke China" program group sent an invitation to Richard. In Richard’s view, it’s like China’s old saying that fate has come. At the age of 62, he immediately bought a plane ticket to Tianjin and started a "guest" life in China.
Being too old and without a doctorate, Richard had to stay in China on a tourist visa. Every once in a while, he has to leave the country to go through the relevant visa procedures before entering the country. For Richard, who is in his sixties, besides trouble, it also means a lot of expenses. On one occasion, he flew to Seoul, South Korea, stayed at Incheon Airport for a while and then flew back to Tianjin. He thought that his visa could be extended for one month, but when he went through the formalities, he was told that he could not. Not only was his passport confiscated, but Richard was also asked to leave the country within 10 days. The feeling be nasty under, Weibo helped him again. He sent a Weibo who wanted to stay in China, which was widely forwarded by enthusiastic China netizens and appealed-"Leave Uncle Chinese Characters!"
What followed was a continuous interview and exposure. This time, Beijing Normal University kindly accepted Richard, asked him to teach physics in English on a part-time basis, paid him more than 4,000 yuan a month, and provided him with an office and an apartment. In the past few years, "Uncle Chinese Characters" has gained a lot of media exposure in China. This year alone, Richard was a guest on CCTV twice, and appeared as a guest on the programs of "Reader" and "The First Lesson of School" one after another.
After ending his work contract with Beijing Normal University, Richard moved from Beijing to Huangshan, a small town in Anhui this year. He likes the natural environment of Huangshan Mountain very much. Of course, what attracts him more is that the local people can rent a decent two-bedroom apartment for only 1200 yuan a month. There, Richard can not only concentrate on studying Chinese characters every day, but also have a few like-minded friends to discuss with. There are kind scholars and friends who ask their students to be Richard’s assistants, communicate with him in the study of Chinese characters, and give advice on website construction. There are also more enthusiastic people who constantly help Richard find various lecture opportunities. For Richard, these opportunities can not only bring him some extra income, but also enable him to pass on his persistent concept of Chinese characters to more practical users of Chinese characters.
He told reporters that he met some calligraphers in China, who could write beautiful seal characters and even Oracle Bone Inscriptions, but after talking with them, he found that they didn’t really understand the true meaning of those Chinese characters. In his view, such calligraphers are more like artists: "They are just’ painting’ beautiful words, and what I want to explore is where this word comes from."
In fact, the origin of Chinese characters can be traced back to 6000 years ago, from Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Jinwen, to official script and cursive script, and finally evolved into simplified Chinese characters which are commonly used today. During this period, at least 9 glyphs have evolved. In Richard’s view, since the use of simplified characters, in fact, the vast majority of Chinese did not understand or have no intention to understand the real story behind the evolution of Chinese characters, which he was very worried about. "For thousands of years, the traditional culture has evolved to this day. If most Chinese are not interested now and don’t know the story behind them, how long can they be circulated? I am worried that in another hundred years, the simplified Chinese characters you use now will no longer exist. " Richard said.
A way to stick to motivation and move forward
Richard has a habit, no matter where he goes, he will take a notebook with him, and when he communicates with others, he will write down the evolution of several Chinese characters to arouse their curiosity. Even for a group of primary school students, he used some simple hieroglyphs to try to make them understand the potential connection between words and things.
In the stepped classroom of the International Chinese Teacher Research Base of East China Normal University, Richard asked everyone to brainstorm: "If you walked into the home of an ordinary Chinese five thousand years ago, what would you see first?" After a few seconds of silence, there were various conjectures-heatable adobe sleeping platform, charcoal fire, pottery …
The answer of "Uncle Chinese Characters" is a spinning hammer in a child’s hand. "I feel that the work of spinning should occupy an important position in the lives of the ancients, because in the database I sorted out, almost a quarter of Chinese characters are related to spinning and weaving or clothing. Although I don’t know how the ancients lived, I can deduce it a little bit through ancient Chinese characters. "
After the three-hour lecture, several students waited. They gathered around the blackboard and exchanged their knowledge of Chinese characters with Richard. Richard wrote a word "belly" on the blackboard: "There was no such word in ancient times, but there were words" moon "and" earth ". Many books say that’ moon’ stands for meat, but I don’t think so. " He continued to write "Moon" in Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Jin Wenli on the blackboard: "Look at its appearance, where is it like meat? These words, with rows of strokes, clearly look like bones. I have been thinking about it for a long time. Many experts say it is meat, but I think it is a rib. "
"Another example is the word" people ",which is left and right. Some people say that these are two feet, while others say that these are two hands. But I think these explanations are all wrong. Because if you look at its Oracle Bone Inscriptions evolution, you can see a person’s head, body, hands and feet. In fact, that is all a person has. " Richard told reporters that if an expert told him a story about Chinese characters, he would definitely study it himself to see if it was reasonable and true. He doesn’t want to listen to those "joking" Chinese characters, but just wants to know the most real explanation. Of course, if the other party disagrees with his opinion, he is willing to discuss and learn from them further.
Unfortunately, in the years when I lived in Beijing where experts gathered, there were not many scenes that Richard longed for to learn from experts. Tens of thousands of letters in the mailbox are mostly from ordinary netizens. Xiao Chen, an assistant, has been following Richard for the past year, answering emails for him, helping him arrange activities, and assisting him in maintaining and updating the website on a daily basis. In her view, as a 60-year-old foreign old man, being able to devote the most precious decades of his life to Chinese characters in China is an amazing thing in itself.
During the interview, she took out her mobile phone and showed the reporter an article about "Uncle Chinese Characters" written by Zhihu. With nearly 40,000 views, there are many voices that make her feel "harsh"-although some people admire the spirit of "Uncle Chinese Characters", they feel that his approach is not desirable-"To look up the ancient font of a Chinese character, we not only need to know how to write this ancient character, but more importantly, we need to know its origin. The website of’ Uncle Chinese Characters’ has only images, no source, no explanation, no context, and it is impossible to verify and demonstrate the correctness. " "The Oracle Bone Inscriptions Editions and the Jinwen Editions scanned by Uncle Chinese Characters are works in the middle of last century. In today’s view, these two sets of ancient Chinese characters have many missing and misinterpreted components, which are not suitable for today’s ancient Chinese philology research. "
"They said these,’ Chinese Uncle’ also knows, but he didn’t want to use the latest reference books to compare and correct mistakes? For example, he really wants the New Jin Wen Bian, but it costs two or three thousand yuan for a set, which’ Uncle Chinese Characters’ can’t afford. Then can I have an electronic version? Sorry, I can’t either, because it involves copyright issues. Wouldn’t he like to make the content of the website more detailed? He also wants to, but he is only one person after all, not to mention that he has spent all his savings over the years. " As one of the closest people to "Uncle Chinese Characters", assistant Xiao Chen is a little angry at these demanding voices.
Richard himself, as always, is calm: "Some people say that my website has no academic value, but I want to ask, where is your website?" I want to see it! Perhaps some people’s research is indeed more valuable than mine, and the information at hand is newer and more complete than mine, which is very valuable. But if it is not open and can be seen by ordinary people casually, where is its value? "
Of course, there are also many staunch supporters of "Uncle Chinese Characters" in the discussion. One netizen said, "Regardless of academic value, I think Uncle Chinese’s website is of great practical value. As early as more than ten years ago, he digitized all the fonts in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, Jinwen, Liushutong and Shuowen, and each font is a picture, which can be enlarged and reduced, making it very convenient to use. In the early years, the prices of Oracle Bone Inscriptions Editions were so high that ordinary people couldn’t afford them. The general library didn’t collect them and there was no place to borrow them. To this end, we can’t systematically look up the early fonts of specific Chinese characters, and we often suffer from it … People who haven’t experienced this kind of pain can’t understand the convenience brought by the website of’ Uncle Chinese Characters’ to Chinese character research enthusiasts. "
At the end of the interview, Richard excitedly wrote down the address of his new website to the reporter. "The content on the original website has basically moved home. Soon, when we go back, we will start to record videos, tell stories about Chinese characters and put them on the new website. I have written more than a thousand stories over the years. " He said.
"It sounds like this project is huge, so are you still short of money recently?" The reporter couldn’t help but ask.
"The recent income is ok, at least for two months, and I don’t know." Richard is not shy about it.
The reporter’s heart is a little guilty for him: "Can so many stories be recorded smoothly?"
Richard seems to see the reporter’s concern: "I will never plan my life for more than half a year, otherwise there would be no such website." My aim is not to think too much. As long as you can do it today, start doing it, and then find a way to do it every day. "
At that moment, the reporter finally understood why Richard could stick to this road that was never optimistic for so long. (Wang Xing)
