“I'm looking at those.” We were in Leiden, it was 2019, and the compact woman to my right was gesturing to some 1930s Manchukuo books that I had begun thumbing through. Looking up from the conference bookstand in front of us, I readied a hostile gaze to aim at . . . one of my academic heroes. Elisabeth Kaske, whose Politics of Language in Chinese Education (2008) arguably sparked the current wave of scholarship on language in China, graciously accepted my apologies and awkward admiration. But, she said, she had moved on to other topics. Few others had seemed interested in language.
Kingdom of Characters is a sign of how far things have come. In the past decade, many scholars have added significantly to our knowledge and understanding of language, both in China in particular and in Asia in general. Contributors include Robert Culp, Zev Handel, Peter Kornicki, Uluğ Kuzuoğlu,...
