Yu Li is Assistant Professor of Chinese in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Loyola Marymount University, USA. Her research interests include Chinese linguistics, Chinese language pedagogy, East Asian calligraphy, and the Chinese linguistic landscape in the diaspora.

Part I Linguistic Preliminaries

Chapter 1 Foundational concepts

Chapter 2 What is writing?

Chapter 3 What kinds of writing systems are there?

Chapter 4 P¿ny¿n tutorial

Part II Writing Chinese

Chapter 5 The Chinese speech

Chapter 6 Written Chinese

Chapter 7 The Chinese writing system

Chapter 8 Demythifying the Chinese script

Part III Borrowing the Chinese writing system

Chapter 9 Chinese characters in Asia: An overview

Chapter 10 Writing Korean

Chapter 11 Writing Japanese

Chapter 12 Writing Vietnamese

Part IV Reforming the Chinese script

Chapter 13 Phonetic writing before p¿ny¿n

Chapter 14 P¿ny¿n

Chapter 15 Simplification of Chinese characters

Chapter 16 Writing and technology in modern China

Part V Identity and gender in writing Chinese

Chapter 17 Handwriting and personhood

Chapter 18 Sexism in the Chinese writing system

Chapter 19 N¿sh¿: Women's script

Chapter 20 Script choice in writing Japanese

Part VI Chinese Characters in art and literature

Chapter 21 Chinese calligraphy

Chapter 22 A calligraphy workshop

Chapter 23 Modern calligraphy in China

Chapter 24 Chinese Characters in Avant-garde art

Chapter 25 Chinese Characters and Western Modernist poetry