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Richard Sears studies the etymology of Chinese characters in his office at Beijing Normal University. Provided to China Daily |
He was just an academic with an unusual hobby - until his etymology website of Chinese characters became a smash hit online
Before 2011, Richard Sears was little known in China.
His Sears' etymology website of Chinese characters, which traces the origin and evolution of 6,552 of the most-common modern Chinese characters, had a small following. The academic was living quietly in the United States.
Now, Sears has more than 20,000 followers on the micro blog Sina Weibo, and is called "Uncle Hanzi" in China where he has become something of a celebrity.
Sears spent 10 years learning Chinese, 20 years establishing a database of Chinese characters (hanzi in pinyin), and another 10 years setting up his etymology website.
"People thought I was crazy when I was in the United States, spending all my money and time on the website. But for me, it's just an interest," Sears says.
The 64-year-old teaches physics in the department of system science at Beijing Normal University and spends his spare time working on his website, chineseetymology.org.
Wu Jinshan, an assistant professor and a colleague of Sears, says the American is the first person in the world to digitize Chinese etymology and share his research for free online.
"Chinese scholars have written many books on Chinese etymology. It costs a lot of money to get all of them. But Richard did all the collecting, compiling and digitizing of the information," Wu says.
Sitting at his office at Beijing Normal University, Sears shows the evolution of the Chinese character wu (dance) from its seal script to modern Chinese on a blackboard.
"If you look at the strokes of the character, it has no meaning and is difficult to memorize. If you know how it evolved and find the logic behind the character, it's easy for foreigners like me to remember," says Sears in fluent Chinese, although he jokes about his Chinese with an "American accent".
Sears' love affair with the Chinese language started 42 years ago, when he woke up one day in the US city of Boston with the idea that he would like to learn Chinese, a language then spoken by one-fifth of the world's population. He bought a ticket to Taiwan and started to study.
He spoke to everyone he met on the street in Chinese. But he found writing Chinese characters incredibly difficult. A professor told him that if he studied the evolution of every character, he might find them easier to remember.
In 1990, he had the idea to make the etymological information of Chinese characters available online, so people could trace them back to their original form. More importantly, he thought it would help foreigners better understand the logic behind Chinese characters. Sears did some research but didn't start the project, until he suffered a near-fatal heart attack in 1994. He did not know how long he had to live and kept asking himself questions like: "What should I do if I only have one day left? One year or 40 years?
"I finally decided to live like I only have one year left. And to computerize Chinese characters was what I want to do the most," Sears says.
"The experts I visited in China didn't believe I would be able to digitize Chinese characters while the computer scientist had no interest in doing so. I was alone."
He started reading etymology books and writing programs that made 96,000 archaic Chinese characters available online. To scan the huge number of Chinese characters was also demanding and time-consuming and Sears hired a Chinese to help him.
In 2002, Sears put his website online, free for anyone who is interested. For many years, Sears worked quietly on his website in the US when all of a sudden, in January 2011, he received 600, 000 page views in a single day. A Chinese netizen had written a micro blog about Sears' website and the unassuming academic suddenly found himself thrust into the spotlight.
Sears' story was covered in newspapers and on TV, and he soon became known as "Uncle Hanzi". His website also received many donations from Chinese people. He moved to China in 2012.
Now Sears is fond of chatting with his Sina Weibo fans in Chinese. He tells stories about how characters evolve and answers questions from Chinese netizens.
Two months ago, Sears bought a computer at a much higher price than he should have been charged. He blogged about his experience on weibo and was inundated with responses from his loyal fans pledging to get him his money back. A few days later, Sears got his money back from the salesman, who had been overwhelmed with phone calls from angry netizens.
"Many Chinese netizens care about Uncle Hanzi online. When he is not well, his fans express their concern for him," says Jiang Lihui, a volunteer who helps run Uncle Hanzi's Sina Weibo. Jiang is a scholar who is studying at Beijing Normal University for her PhD. She says Sears is a simple man who devotes himself to enhancing the Chinese etymology website.
Uncle Hanzi is now satisfied with his life in China. His job at the university provides him with a house and money for his website. Teaching two classes a week gives him enough time to build his website.
His next goal is to collect pictures related to those Chinese characters and turn the evolution of each character into a cartoon film. "The cartoon project is huge and needs more time and effort. But I don't have enough time left to complete it."
dengzhangyu@chinadaily.com.cn.
