TIM CLARE: Calling someone a coward historically has often been a social lever used by the state to shame them for not doing something the state wants them to do - often walk into machine gunfire. Which, to me, doesn't seem like an act of cowardice to not want to do that.
Read moreAllusionist 153 In Character transcript
we think of all the important transformative game-changing global technologies in communication, like telegraphs, typewriters and computers: none of it was really designed with Chinese in mind. They were all for alphabetic, precisely English language.
HZ: It seems a bit unfair for China to be left behind by writing technologies, given that China had the movable type printing press centuries before Europe.
JING TSU: A fact they will continue to flaunt! That is the question; that's why the catching up was doubled with this memory of “How did we get to this point? We were leading, how do we now end up chasing someone else's writing system from behind?”