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In a small courtyard close to Xidan in Beijing, the fate of Chinese was fiercely debated in 1913. The meeting was held in order to find a nationwide standard of pronunciation for the Chinese language, or in other words create a national tongue something China had never had before. It was a sensitive issue and tea cups were allegedly thrown through the air by angry participants.

The lack of a common language had been a problem for quite some time. In 1728 the Yongzheng Emperor complained that he did not understand a word of what officials from the south were saying, and as officials were banned from serving in their home provinces, he realized that the language barrier was a threat to the empire, simply because the officials often had difficulties communicating with the people they were supposed to manage.

The urgency of finding a way forward for the Chinese language only grew in republican times. Very radical measures were suggested: abolishing the characters or implementing Esperanto were just some of the ideas that were considered, and when Mao joined the debate, the bombastic solutions to the language problem suddenly became both realistic and very likely.

When you consider the long and winding road modern Chinese took from the heated discussions in a small courtyard space and up till today it feels like no less than a miracle that the Chinese characters are still in use. We speak of Chinese as if a golden standard of the language has existed for thousands of years, but in reality the Chinese we speak today is an artificial construct shaped by politics, pragmatism and coincidence.

Join us this Sunday evening when we discuss how modern Chinese was made with David Moser, the author of the incredible book A Billion Voices.