The Duality Code

[WKC]

Shelly,

 

It is self-published.  I paid for the copy editing, proof reading and indexing.  There will be as many copies printed as there is demand for them.

 

Lu Xun is reputed to have said, "汉字不灭，中国必亡" on his death bed.  "Zhou Youguang was never a revolutionary in the mold of the great writer Lu Xun, who was reported to have said on his deathbed, 'Hànzì bù miè, Zhōngguó bì wáng (漢字不滅，中國必亡 / 'If Chinese characters are not eradicated, China will perish').  [Victor H. Mair, 'Foreward' in Zhou Youguang, 'To Inherit the Ancient Teachings of Confucius and Mencius and Establish Modern Confucianism, Sino-Platonic Papers, No 226, June 2012]

 

I do not know how to draw an inference for the context of it being uttered by Lu Xun on his death bed other than that it was not a flippant remark.

 

I do not consider the Duality Code a problem.  It is my hypothesis that it  exists and that people such as Lu Xun, Qian Xuantong, and Mao considered it a problem.  A problem of such magnitude that Qian Xuantong proposed replacing his mother tongue with Esperanto.  It is a hypothesis in my book that if Mao had been allowed to replace Chinese characters with a Latin based writing script as he wanted, then the Cultural Revolution, which caused many lives lost due to unnatural causes, could possibly have been avoided.  I actually think that the way the Duality Code is constructed is mind boggling.

 

I am happy for you to be wary of the contents in my book.  My book will ultimately succeed or fail based on the logical arguments that I make.  All I ask of readers is that they approach my book with a critical but open mind.

 

The cover of my book has a number of elements as follows:

- A marble background because I asked my god daughter to help with the design and she liked a marble background.

- Half a Taiji Tu on the front and half on the back.  This is a reference to duality.

- The word 'Duality' being torn apart.  This is in reference to decryption of the Duality Code.  In the book, I  take Chinese characters and break them up into their component parts.  It is my hypothesis that Characters are dualities comprising two parts.  The first part is the entire character.  The second part are the sub-components.  As an example, the character 大, has the sub-components 一 and 人.  The message in 大 says, 一人大.  As a second example, the character 犬.  This character has the sub-components 丶大犬.  For the character 丶, the Kangxi Dictionary says 古文主字.  Therefore the message 丶大犬 says, 'master big dog'.  The Duality Code is read by decrypting the messages in characters.  However you will have to be able to decrypt sub-components such as ⺀.  My book shows how this is done.  My book shows how to decrypt the context against which to understand the messages in characters.  

 

I take readers through each stage of the decryption process.

[Angelina]

 I am not in any position to comment on the correctness of your book

 

 

 

Why not? You should feel free to express your own opinion. 

[WKC]

For anyone who reads my book.

 

I certainly do not expect anyone who reads my book to take what i say as gospel truth.  I put forward my arguments and I would very much like readers to apply their critical thinking to accept or deny my arguments.

[Shelley]

Why not? You should feel free to express your own opinion.

 

Yes, but I have not read the book, and my knowledge of chinese character etymology is rudimentary.

 

I do not feel qualified to comment on the accuracy of the content of the book.

 

I have expressed my opinion about other things but not the "facts" contained in this book.

 

Lu Xun is reputed to have said, "汉字不灭，中国必亡" on his death bed.

 

I wonder why he said this. Perhaps he felt the people of china would never reach complete literacy as long as characters were being used, he could not have foreseen the the progress of technology making it easier to communicate in all languages all over the world with many people.

 

It is self-published.  I paid for the copy editing, proof reading and indexing.  There will be as many copies printed as there is demand for them.

 

Ah, ok this answers a few questions I had.

 

I hope your book does well but I won't be buying a copy, its not really the sort of thing I am prepared to make time to read.

 

 

[roddy]

Does the Duality Code cast any light on the ideas in the article under discussion here? 

 

Seriously, every now and then someone pops up on here convinced they've discovered something previously unknown about Chinese. It could be how to memorise the characters, it could be hidden messages about the Bible, it could be secret codes hidden in the characters. They make for an amusing interlude. 

[WKC]

Shelly,

 

I am not forcing anyone to buy my book.  You are at liberty to do as you please.

 

 

 

Roddy,

 

The Dually Code can be traced back to Oracle Script.  I decrypt Oracle Script characters as well.  The framework of the Duality Code is the same in the various scripts, but there has been re-encryption of the Code between scripts.

 

I have not decrypted anything relate to the topic that you pointed me to.

[OneEye]

As an example, the character 大, has the sub-components 一 and 人. The message in 大 says, 一人大. As a second example, the character 犬. This character has the sub-components 丶大犬. For the character 丶, the Kangxi Dictionary says 古文主字. Therefore the message 丶大犬 says, 'master big dog'. The Duality Code is read by decrypting the messages in characters.

Ok, I'm washing my hands of this nonsense. Best of luck to you.

[WKC]

OneEye,

 

Sad to lose you.  Cheers.

[Angelina]

It's not about losing people. If you make a statement that is too far-fetched, others will (and should) tell you how you should reconsider what you have said. 

 

Look at Chineasy! Good graphic design, otherwise, I would not say worthless, but you know, it looks like the author has wasted her time. It is better to get feedback early on. 

 

Shelley, you might have limited experience with Chinese. Are you sure you are 100% unqualified to comment? It is a good idea to be humble and listen to people who simply have more experience. Yet, you can try to make your own judgements, on what little experience and qualifications you have. 

[WKC]

Angelina,

 

I was surprised by the Chineasy TED talk when I saw it some time ago.

 

I am quite happy to receive constructive comments.  If people don't understand what I am saying I am sad to see them go.

 

The Duality Code is a highly complex multi-layered cipher.  There are many moving parts.  To me the most interesting part of it is the 五行 and the 五刑.  This is all explained in my book if anyone wishes to read it.  I'm not too fussed if some or most people don't believe in the Duality Code.  I think there will be one or two who will wonder why Qian Xuntong, Lu Xun and Mao all wanted to get away from Chinese characters sufficiently to read what I have to say.  

 

I don't actually worry about selling a lot of books.  My hope is that I can have a constructive conversation with one or two people who have read the book at some point.

[Lu]

So, what I seem to understand from what you've written so far, every Chinese character has two meanings (but no more than two): the one in the dictionary and the one that can only be found by taking the character apart and decipering it according to your method. And every text therefore can be read as it is and also according to the second, hidden meaning of every character. And Chinese literati all knew this second, hidden meaning. Is that about right? But are you the first to ever see through this, and if not, who else has written about it? There must be some older Chinese texts used to teach new generations of literati all this, no?

 

Edit to add: Roddy, thanks for that link. Linguistic Theories vs the Bible is almost as awesome as the Linguistic Theories vs Mainstream Linguistics threads OneEye sometimes is kind enough to participate in.

[eddyf]

WKC, since you claim this is an academic work, why don't you send free copies of your book to a bunch of respected sinologists and see if you can get any of them to write a review of book. Without feedback from other academics, your ideas will never get any traction and no one will take you seriously and all your efforts to write an entire book will be a waste of time. But if you can get someone who knows what they're talking about to endorse your book, then maybe it will take off and be successful.

 

My personal "hypothesis" is that you spent a whole lot of time finding patterns where there are none, that 汉字 have nothing mystical about them, and that you won't be able to get a single sinologist to read your book much less endorse it. And Lu Xun's quote “汉字不灭，中国必亡” has the obvious interpretation of: "Chinese characters are by far the most complicated writing system in the world. Considering the existence of much simpler writing systems in other languages, such a complicated writing system is clearly not necessary. The undue complexity of Chinese characters will seriously hamper attempts to achieve universal literacy. And without universal literacy China will ultimately not be able to modernize and hold off the influence of foreign powers."

 

Why did Qian Xuantong, Lu Xun, and Mao all want to get away from Chinese characters? Oh, I dunno, maybe because they are a really impractical writing system and if they were replaced with an alphabet, everyone in China could stop worrying about memorizing and remembering a few thousand characters and could then dedicate that newly freed up mental power to other pursuits more likely to advance China's standing in the world. Imagine that...

[li3wei1]

"Are you sure you are 100% unqualified to comment?"

Angelina, Shelley was saying she was in no position to comment on the book because she hadn't read it. Many of us take the same position. If we haven't read something or seen something, we cannot comment meaningfully on it. We can comment on the ideas WKC has put forward in this thread, but we reserve comment on the book itself until we've seen it.

You're free to comment about anything you like, whether you've read it or not, but your credibility may suffer.

[lips]

Mao was prevented from replacing Chinese characters in order to eliminate the Duality Code. So he did the next best thing... He repressed the 文士. This leads us to the Anti-Rightist Movement and the Cultural Revolution. Understanding the Duality Code yields unique perspectives on historical events.

ROTFLMAO. That's the darndest thing I've ever heard.

Why did Qian Xuantong, Lu Xun, and Mao all want to get away from Chinese characters?

Maybe there's a secret message in what they said? Mmmmm .....

Or maybe they were just plain wrong.

[WKC]

Lu,

 

Chinese characters have a vernacular meaning that everyone educated in Chinese can understand.  For example, 大.  Everyone can read it as 'big, large, grand'.  Every character can be viewed as a duality.  Taking the charactKaer 大 as an example.  One part of the duality is the whole character 大.  The second part of the duality comprises the sub-components 一人.  The two parts of the duality combine to form a unity, that contains a message.  Therefore the message is read as 一人大.  One man is big.  In any group or society there is a leader who is the big man.  The message in all Chinese characters was only known to the 士.  

 

Keep reading messages in characters.  Kai Script is 楷書.  書 means book.  Kai Script itself is a book.  The sentences in the Kai book are contained in all the characters of the script.  But in order to read some of these characters, decryption of the sub-components is required.  For example, 今.  The bottom component has to be decrypted.  My book teaches people how to use the dictionaries to do the decryption.  The top component is 亼 which means 'to assemble'.  The message says  (undefined) 亼 (to assemble) 今 (today).  When you keep reading messages, a picture begins to appear.  There are contextual decryption keys that enable us to understand the messages in characters.  These also have to be deciphered and my book show how.

 

The Chinese literati were taught how to decipher the code.  The best at deciphering and using the code fared best at the imperial examinations and went on to be scholar officials.  There is no single text that I am aware of that taught the decryption of the Code.  This may be because it was handed down from teacher to student.  

 

It was known that the Chinese scholars were doing classical exegesis.  To me, classical exegesis is decryption of the Duality Code.

 

Only the 士 knew what was going on.  When the first europeans arrived in China, the 士 did not teach them the Code which was a 士 secret.  At the turn of the 20th century, the 士 realised that for China to progress, the non-士 had to be educated.  This was problematic because of the existence of the Code.  In the New Culture Movement, the discussed what to do.  Qin Xuantong favoured adopting Esperanto.  Lu Xun thought a latin based script was good enough.  This is what he argued for in 門外文談.  After the Chinese civil war, the non 士 were educated but only taught vernacular Chinese.  As the Code still exists, there was a big cover up spin operation.  That's my take any way.

[WKC]

eddyf,

 

You have suggested what I have already decided to do.  There will be complementary copies made available to a group of academics.

[Shelley]

Only the 士 knew what was going on.  When the first europeans arrived in China, the 士 did not teach them the Code which was a 士 secret.  At the turn of the 20th century, the 士 realised that for China to progress, the non-士 had to be educated.  This was problematic because of the existence of the Code.  In the New Culture Movement, the discussed what to do.  Qin Xuantong favoured adopting Esperanto.  Lu Xun thought a latin based script was good enough.  This is what he argued for in 門外文談.  After the Chinese civil war, the non 士 were educated but only taught vernacular Chinese.  As the Code still exists, there was a big cover up spin operation.  That's my take any way.

 

 

Oh I see, its even less sensible than I thought.

 

How come you are the only person in the world to figure this out?

 

Or are there others? Is there an underground of people who know the Code?

 

I can't really complain too much, it is natural for people look for patterns in things, its how we learn and remember, but sometimes there just aren't any patterns.

[imron]

This was problematic because of the existence of the Code.

Why would the existence of the Code be problematic?

 

As the Code still exists, there was a big cover up spin operation.  That's my take any way.

How does this tie in with all the 士 who moved to Taiwan and Hong Kong after the end of the civil war?  I imagine if Mao was trying to run a cover up the Taiwanese scholars would have done their darndest to try and stick it to him.

[Angelina]

li3wei1

 

Angelina, Shelley was saying she was in no position to comment on the book because she hadn't read it.

 

 

 

not exactly 

 

 

 

Yes, but I have not read the book, and my knowledge of chinese character etymology is rudimentary.

 

I do not feel qualified to comment on the accuracy of the content of the book.

 

 

This is what she said.

 

Maybe it's better to be on the safe side and choose not to comment on things. Why should some people, like Shelley, be too humble to make statements while others would come up with their own silver bullets where we immediately understand Chinese culture? 

 

Anyway, none of us has read the book and we can only comment on what we read here. 

 

Chineasy is an excellent example as one of all those projects we see around. It actually took off and many people were interested in it. It is better for WKC if he gets feedback as soon as possible because he would not want his book to become a Chineasy. 

[WKC]

Shelly,

 

I was surprised to see you back.  But welcome.

 

I know why I figured it out.

1.  I kept reading the sub-components in characters to see what they said.  When I came across sub-components that were not defined, I looked at every single character that I could find that had the undefined sub-component and eventually worked out how they were decrypted.  

2. I also used to play 'scrabble' with characters.   I broke characters into there component to see what sentences I could make.  Over time I learned how to read the messages contained in characters.

3. I used to read the 說文 which says some interesting things.  Eventually, I figured out what was happening.

4. I was interested in seeing how Oracle Script and Seal Script characters developed into Kai Script characters and this also helped me put the pieces together.