To people with no shared spoken language, could writing be an alternative mode of communication? In cross-border encounters between Chinese and Japanese, they may improvise some hànzì / kanji (漢字) for clarification, e.g., when soliciting travel information. For hundreds of years until the 1900s, Sinitic brush-talk (漢文筆談) was a salient communication practice between East Asian literati of Classical Chinese from today’s Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and China. Sinitic-based texts were spread from China since ancient times; their written forms, pronunciations and meanings of 漢字 were adapted to the local languages and learned by those with the means to do so. The ‘Sinographic Cosmopolis’ (漢字大都會) gradually emerged as regional texts composed in 漢字were comprehensible by other literati within Sinographic East Asia, where translation seemed unnecessary. Paradoxically, recited in speech, Sinitic texts would be incomprehensible as spoken languages were mutually unintelligible. Quite a lot of brush conversation datasets have survived, allowing us to research who communicated with whom, where and when, and for what purposes.
This hybrid seminar aims at introducing brush conversation as a historically salient but almost forgotten practice. Three 30-minute presentations outlining the historical background will be followed by the premiere of a 22-minute animation, ‘The Brush is Mightier than the Sword’,《鋒芒「筆」露》(accessible in multiple languages, including some Chinese ‘dialects’) and a 90+ page multilingual manga. They tell the story of a 5-month drifting ordeal of Chosŏn (Korean) scholar-official, Ch’oe Pu 崔溥 (1454–1504) in 1488, whose boat carrying 42 other Koreans was blown off course and stranded off the coast of Zhejiang province in China. Ch’oe Pu’s excellent command of Classical Chinese helped him dispel allegations of his crew being Japanese pirates in disguise while ascertaining their Korean identity, allowing them eventually to express gratitude to the Ming Emperor in an audience before returning to Korea. Thus is a fascinating story how the lives of 43 boat-drifters were saved by the resourceful brush of a Korean scholar-official through conducting brush conversation in alien land.
Speaker：
Prof. Ross King, University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada
Prof. Ivana Gubić, University of Croatia, the Republic of Croatia
Prof. David C. S. Li The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Dr Reijiro Aoyama The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Dr Wong Tak-Sum (Independent scholar)
Mr. Royce Ng City University of Hong Kong
Mr. Harry Ho The Education University of Hong Kong
