History
EN
The Characters That Built China (2022)
['Rund Abdelfatah Ramtin Arablouei Lawrence Wu Laine Kaplan-Levenson Anya Steinberg Yolanda Sangweni Julie Caine Casey Miner Victor Yvellez Kumari Devarajan Deb George', 'Rund Abdelfatah', 'Ramtin Arablouei', 'Lawrence Wu', 'Laine Kaplan-Levenson', 'Anya Steinberg', 'Yolanda Sangweni', 'Julie Caine', 'Casey Miner', 'Victor Yvellez']
Throughline
In this episode, we follow three key reformers who worked to modernize written and spoken Chinese, sometimes risking their lives to do so. Their work simplified Chinese, standardized it, and took it from an inaccessible language built for the elite to a modern language for the masses. It was a struggle that spanned generations, changed the fate of millions of people, and helped create the powerful modern nation-state of China.