Some questions and comments about this World Record were discussed at some discussion forums. We are answering some of them here.
On June 5th 2008, Jason had a media test. Not only were there many chinese reporters but also teachers from chinese schools in the LA area, and anyone who is interested in chinese was invited to that meeting. I was one of the people who attended that meeting. As a member of Testing committee, I was able to sense the atmosphere of the meeting.
At the beginning, all news reporters were in a hostile mood and wanted to challenge Jason’s claim eagerly. They threw out the first test word 尷 with victorious smiles on their faces. Jason was able to duplicate the word with hand writing after glancing at it for only a few seconds. They were slightly surprised with this but still confident about their test word. After 30 seconds of silence, Jason said in english (as he was unable to speak a single Chinese word verbally) that the left radical means “the humpback” and the right radical means “supervision”. After another 30 seconds, Jason said, “The original meaning of this word is a man who does not know how to act under supervision,” meaning this person doesn’t know what to do. After this answer, I sensed right the way that the entire atmosphere in the room had changed from hostile to a state of shock. Later, I found out:
After this first test word, it took a few minutes discussion among the reporters to come up with the second test word 靈 . Again after just a few seconds, Jason dissected this word as follows.
Jason said that this word shows a scene of, at least, “3” shamans dancing for rain. It means channeling with rain spirits. Jason never did say that it means “spirit,” the fashionable meaning today.
About 15 more words were tested after these first two. The following are two more examples:
In general, a plant’s name is often identified with one sound tag. As this word has two additional radicals, it might not be the name of a plant but must be something about or relating to plants. By decoding these parts, it must be a great ability handling plants.
Again, Jason never did said that 藝 means art, the fashionable meaning today. While many Chinese reporters are looking at one another on deciding the validity of Jason’s answer, one Chinese scholar (Mr. Chou) said that Jason was correct as the original meaning of the word is about the great ability on farming.
So, it means a repeated hand action.
Jason never did said that 摺 means folding, the fashionable meaning today.
After these test words, there were some discussion among the Chinese news reporters. They concluded:
In fact, after the first two test words, I could sense the mood in the room among the Chinese reporters which had changed from shocking to praising. In their reporting (5 newspapers and 6 TV stations), they all reported their awe about the first test word 尷 .
It took 5 days to dissect 1,200 G1 words.
Note: There are rules of dissection and decoding in the later lessons. However, I was not allowed to learn them at this step. I can only sense the two processes (dissection and decoding) from the examples of those 300 sound modules. It took a week (7 days) to complete this task.
At this step, I am not allowed to use dictionary to find out the meaning of the word before I did the dissection and decoding.
It took 10 days to complete this task.
It took two weeks to complete this task.
During these five steps, I “encountered” about 1,500 words (characters). The “key word” here is “encountering.” That is, I did not simply learn 1,500 words but am not encountering the other 57,000 words. When I encounter them, I should be able to dissect and to decode them. After these five steps, I should know all Chinese words regardless of whether I encountered them before or not.
NOTE: If I learned a character without going through the process of dissection and decoding it would be wrong to this learning process.
However, we are truly shocked that anyone can contemplating that all Chinese reporters (who attended Jason’s meeting) are crooks. It will be truly, truly sad even if this is only a remote possibility (crooked reporters). If imron truly believes that there is such a possibility, he should ask the editor-in-chief of those newspapers to investigate this possibility, and we will follow his lead to demand an answer. Indeed, we should act right now instead of throwing cheap shots to smear a third party in a discussion forum.
However, before the World Record Committee awarded Jason his World Record, we did invite the world to review and to challenge his work and claims, that is, he was and still is putting himself on the “spot” (the 的, 眾 矢 之 「 的 」 , the target of all arrows). Even if Jason were a con artist, he has the right to stand tall and high when he has the courage to be the 的 of all investigations.
Note: from the posts of your discussion forum, we noticed that no member of that forum knows that 的 means the “target.” There is a Chinese idiom, 無 「 的 」 放 矢 (shooting without knowing the target). That is, that who does the 無 「 的 」 放 矢 should be embarrassed.
In fact, many institutions did investigate into Jason’s work and claims.
The above facts and documents (their directives and letters) are available on Jason’s site.
Under so many powerful reviews, Jason’s claim should stand before he is discredited. We think that the “embarrassment” belongs to those by throwing cheap shots. If we have no ability to discredit Jason ourselves, we, at least, can demand those powerful institutes (Taiwan government, Harvard University, Yale University, USC, etc.) to release their investigations as soon as possible. We are doing such demand right here and are asking you to join us to do the same in your future posts.
In 1920s (during the May 4th movement), the slogan in China was 漢 字 不 廢 、 中 國 必 亡 (if not abandon Chinese character system, China as a nation will disappear from the Earth). Chinese character system was deemed as the culprit for China’s backwardness and high illiteracy rate at that time. This was why Chinese characters were simplified in 1958. If 康 熙 radicals allow Chinese character system to be learned in 90 days, then it had no reason to do the simplification. If you are a native Chinese and say that Chinese character system is easy to learn because that all characters are composed of parts, you will be the first person saying so, as all the great scholars during the 1950s in China did not know that.
No, the fact that characters are composed of parts (especially in terms of 康 熙 radicals) will not make learning Chinese character system any easier. In fact, with the 康 熙 radicals there is no chance of any kind that we can dissect and decode Chinese characters correctly. Only a right set of word roots can lead to a right way of dissecting characters and a right path of decoding them.
If you don’t know how to dissect a word correctly, you can never decode the meaning of that word correctly. Then, you must learn every character independently (not knowing it with a process), and it takes 4 to 5 school years for native Chinese children to learn 3,000 characters.
