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Chinese tradition did not encourage impersonal politeness to strangers, comparable to the generic English hello, Japanese konnichiwa, or Arabic/Hebrew shalom, used uniformly toward people regardless of their rank. China’s politeness has been hierarchical, centered on face building among insiders addressed by title. Strangers can fall outside this hierarchical system. Chinese people, encouraged by government campaigns, are now smoothing rapid urban encounters by expanding traditional politeness to encompass imperso…

The ideographic fallacy holds that Chinese characters are “ideographs” (also called ideograms) that express ideas independent of spoken language. The idea originated among early modern Europeans, spread to Japan, and then to China. Sustained by cultural politics east and west, it retains a powerful hold on the popular imagination and in some areas of academia. However, linguists, psychologists, and computer scientists consider the ideographic fallacy to be long disproved. Computer science breakt…