Background
背景
In 1915, the New Culture Movement arose, which promoted in China an unconditional imitation of everything of the west, including introducing the concept of linguistics in Chinese which never existed before. However, Hanzi is not in a position to find any counterparts in western linguistics, just like one with six fingers cannot fit gloves designed for ordinary persons. The extreme lack of confidence among Chinese towards domestic cultures back then significantly dampened the status of Hanzi in the Chinese language (Ji, 2018, p. 11). According to the modern Chinese dictionary, the definition of "词语" (means word in English) are: "the minimum, indivisible units of Chinese language" (“词语,” 2016, p. 187); The definition of Hanzi is: "the elements that forms words" (“汉字,” 2016, p. 345). Consequently, Hanzi has not been duly brought up in Chinese classes and Chinese teaching as a foreign language. Whenever learning a Hanzi in school, students only learn about the possible words that can be formed with this Hanzi, without having any analysis of why the Hanzi is written as it is, nor do they have to reflect upon the significance carried by the Hanzi.
This blind pursuit after western language systems deprived Hanzi of its original status. In Hanzi teaching, the fact that Hanzi are hieroglyphics was denied, and the cultural information contained in Hanzi abandoned, making them simply complex written symbols. Such cramming way of learning Chinese characters has significantly affected children learning Chinese in China as well as foreigners willing to learn Chinese. Children in China achieve the level of reading two years later on average than children in western countries using alphabetic writing. Chinese has always been known as the most difficult language to learn.