Every year since the year of 2006, the activities were held for selecting typical Chinese characters to describe the passing year in network. After holding for five years, this activity was held again in this year. For those who learn Chinese in China, it is a good opportunity to learn some featured Chinese characters.
The purpose of holding the Chinese characters selecting activity is to describe your impression on China or even the whole world in the passing year with one character or word. To make it clearer, I will provide the characters in the past five years to those who study in China. The character for describing 2006 was “炒”, for 2007 was “张”, for 2008 was “和”, “被” was for the year of 2009 and “涨” for 2010.
This activity of 2011 started from November 14 to December 12. If learners who study Chinese in China, they can pay more attention to it. Totally, three stages are divided, the first one is the network recommendation, the next stage is expert commentary and the last is the network voting phase. The followings are the detailed selecting processes.
During the time from November 14 to 28, the net citizens recommend the characters or words respectively in the four classifications: domestic character, domestic word, international character and international words. A piece of recent news came to those who learn Chinese in Yunnan that from November 29 to December 4, the judging committee that is made up of experts and media person should recommend ten characters or words from the ones network citizens choose.
For the chosen ten characters or words, the network citizens will vote for the one they think is the best in the duration from December 5 to December 12. The recommenders of these ten characters or words will win the Entry Prize. And the recommenders of the selected character or words will win the Winning Prize. There are many foreigners who learn Mandarin in China show great interest in this activity.
What’s more, in order to stimulate more people to concern about and anticipate in this activity, the sponsor will arbitrarily choose some lucky network citizens who frequently use micro blog and give them certain prize. The final result will be published in the presentation on December 14. This activity is very helpful to attract the public’s attention to the happened things in this year and encourage them to explore the splendor of Chinese characters. At the same time, foreigners who learn Chinese language in China can gain some interest in learning Chinese.
As a matter of fact, this activity has been held for more than ten years in foreign countries like Korea, Japan and Singapore. In China, it began form the year of 2006. So it has gone through five sessions. Some foreigners in Mandarin language courses in China may wonder why this activity was held also in foreign countries. It is necessary for them to know the purpose.
The aim of holding this activity is to make comments on the changing China or world with the beautiful Chinese language and further expand the influence of Chinese language in international world. By promoting the dissemination of Chinese, the charm of Chinese language will be shown and people around the world will have a deeper understanding on the rich cultural connotation in Chinese. At that time, more and more people will go to Chinese language school to learn charming Chinese.
There are some misunderstandings in society about this activity. But according to Lei Yi, a researcher of Scientific Socialism Research Institute, this Chinese language selecting activity is just a kind of language monitoring. So, teachers in Mandarin learning courses may tell you that it does not stand for the value of the sponsor. For instance, the character “被” for 2006 can be the one to describe the situation is persuading because it respected the will of the public.
The sponsor for holding the activity of this year has strengthened the members of the experts group. Many famous media person and experts were invited. What’s more, in the press conference of this year, more kinds of words will be published by the national language resources monitoring and research center. Students go to school to study Mandarin may be curious about the “top ten new words”, “the top ten popular words” and “ten network terms”.
By holding this kind of activity, the charm of Chinese characters is shown. People can get a better understanding on the cultural connotation in Chinese language.