UN Chinese Language Day 2023

To celebrate the UN Chinese Language Day on 20th April 2023, Zhaoxia Pang, Lecturer in Chinese, would like to share the phrase wén fáng sì bǎo (文房四宝) which means “the four treasures in a scholar’s study", namely, brush pen, ink stick, paper (rice paper) and ink stone.

In her teaching of Chinese 3 course (155901097/15PCHC009) at SOAS University of London, she had a text in which there was a brief introduction about the Chinese calligraphy and inevitably the phrase wén fáng sì bǎo was mentioned. She took “the four treasures” to the classroom for illustration. The students could not only see and touch these items, but they also had the hands-on experience of writing calligraphy. They all enjoyed this hands-on session of calligraphy writing.

However, even though the stylised and artistic way of writing of Chinese characters still enjoys some popularity in China, it is barely noticed in the mainstream education. In an era of looming AI, Zhaoxia was wondering if action might be taken to emphasise the importance of wén fáng sì bǎo so as to keep these “treasures” from being forgotten and being discarded like “thresh”. 

The date for the UN Chinese Language Day was selected from Guyu (谷雨), which is the sixth of the 24 solar terms in Chinese lunar calendar, so it is on or around 20 April each year.