Isaac Peed
English 308j
Professor Lee
November 4, 2010
"One i
mage is worth a thousand words" (Shlain 179). These are the first words that appear on chapter 19. This chapter ultimately talks about the Yin/Yang symbol and how it portrays each sex equally. Shlain goes on to describe the Yin/Yang symbol as two fluid teardrops nestled head to heal, and how each half extends deep into the other half’s territory. Each side contains within it the seed of its reciprocal (Shlain 179). Shlain also goes on to describe what culture the symbol came from, Chinese, and also goes on to describe that culture for us. However, at first when Shlain describes the culture it does not seem as equal as the Yin/Yang symbol portrays.
Shlain first talks about how unequal the Chinese culture is in today’s society. Women really don’t have much say in anything, not like they used to anyway. For the better part of Chinese history, and especially in the last thousand years, the status of Chinese women has been abysmal (Shlain 179). During this time many men were able to have primary and secondary wives. The primary wives main responsibility were to have children, and not just any children, they had to have sons. The secondary wives main responsibility was to be really nothing more than a slave. Men treated them with such disrespect that they literally had to efface their own personalities. There were many things that a man could do as well that a woman couldn’t. A man could divorce his wife for anything that he so chooses. For example, talking too much, or being too loud. However, a woman could not divorce her husband for any reason. She could return to live with her parents but it considered a disgrace if she was to do so, and it reflected poorly on the family as a whole (Shlain 180). Overall the Yin/Yang symbol that the culture created for peace doesn’t really seem to be doing itself any justice.
However, things were not always as bad as they are now in this society. In later Chinese society women really were viewed of as equals to the male elites. In ancient myths and folktales it recalled that “people knew their mothers and not their fathers”. Women were also allowed to keep their own name, even after marriage. Families were built up from the symbol representing “women” and not men (Shlain 180). There are also many other different things that women were not only allowed to do, but things that related to women as well. In ancient written Chinese, the same character that meant “wife” also meant “equal”, which is far from what it would mean in today’s society. The male dominance of toady has even go so far as to try to destroy the evidence of past equality, just so they can prove that something like sex equality never actually happened, however they are false.
Shlain then takes a turn for conversation in this chapter and begins to describe the language of the Chinese culture, and how different it is from cultures like our own. In American culture we have our own set of “words” that we use to describe something. It may take an entire sentence for us to understand what the other person is saying. However, the Chinese language is consisted of “vocables”, none of which signifies a specific word. The English language consists of 500,000 distinct words; the Chinese equivalent would be between 400 and 800. There is no word for “word” in Chinese, since they do not have words in their language (Shlain 181). The oldest Chinese characters date back to 1500 B.C. which is the same date as the arrival of the alphabet in the western hemisphere. The Chinese were believed to get the same idea of writing as the Indo-Aryans and Semites. Chinese is also the oldest continuously used written language along with Hebrew (Shlain 181).
Written Chinese has no alphabet, no parts of speech and no complex rules of grammar like typical western languages. What the western languages refer to as nouns and verbs, the eastern culture refers to as “radicals”. There are only 216 basic radicals (Shlain 182). The Chinese form of writing is very different from ours. We use letters or a series of letters to describe something, the Chinese uses symbols or images. Even though the Chinese still read their writing in sequence just like the western cultures do. There is also no present, past or future tense in the Chinese language, something very common in our language. Despite the considerable differences between the world’s two dominant writing systems, Chinese calligraphy still greatly diminishes the role of the nonverbal component of speech (Shlain 184). There are many difference between the two languages, however many similarities as well.
The topic of language can really reflect to the first part of the chapter as well; and that would be the topic of gender. The snake, a female symbol, was cursed, crushed, and conquered in the alphabet cultures, yet it was beloved, and worshiped in the ideographic culture in the east. In the west dragons were dispatched by heroes. In the east, dragons portend to good fortune each New Year (Shlain 184-185). Could this be a reason for conflict in the gender battle? There are many important factors that can contribute to the problems with genders and what roles they play. However could speech really be one of those factors? “Like Yin/Yang, these two cultures are both opposite and complementary. Like the hemisphere of the brain, each has the missing input and outlook the other needs to achieve wholeness. This integration of west and east, and left and right awaits the next stage of human evolution.
Discussion Question: With the idea that Shlain talks about on pages 179 and 180 with the downfall of women in modern society and on page 184 and 185 with the sake being a female symbol loved in one society and cursed in another. Do you think that women have become more degraded in American or Chinese society? And do you think the difference of the languages (symbols and words) is a factor? If so, why?
Works Cited:
Shlain, Leonard. “Yin/Yang.” The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image. New York: Penguin / Compass, 1998. PP. 179-186
Yin and Yang child. Photograph. The one child family policy. 2003. Google. 3 November, 2010
