1. Introduction

In English, it seems obvious what a word is: it is a meaningful unit written between spaces. In Chinese, there is a similar unit, also written between (invisible) spaces: it is called zì 字, a monosyllabic graph that in most cases has a meaning. Naturally, many people equate “word” in English with zì in Chinese. For example, Mǎ Jiànzhōng 馬建忠 (1844–1900), a…