{"id":46036,"date":"2020-02-10T20:59:03","date_gmt":"2020-02-11T01:59:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=46036"},"modified":"2020-02-10T20:59:03","modified_gmt":"2020-02-11T01:59:03","slug":"nested-calligraphy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=46036","title":{"rendered":"Nested calligraphy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Cl\u00e9ment Pit-Claudel writes:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">I was recently at the Boston antiquarian book fair, where I spotted a book titled\u00a0<i>The Battle of Foochow<\/i>\u00a0about the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fuzhou#Republic_of_China\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fuzhou%23Republic_of_China&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1581471908605000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFez5KOD9FDYGdTQ39o88x8u-4GmQ\">Fuzhou Uprising<\/a>\u00a0of November 8, 1911, in which revolutionaries defeated the Qing (Manchu) army, a significant step on the way to the fall of the last dynasty in traditional Chinese history, when the six-year-old\u00a0<a title=\"Emperor of China\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Emperor_of_China\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Emperor_of_China&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1581471908605000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEwA_QnrDXy-Cf_RRpQ7ycYgGEvww\">Last Emperor<\/a>,\u00a0<a title=\"Puyi\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Puyi\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Puyi&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1581471908605000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGhP0TOr5lTUp7Bnf13bUaaKVHOMA\">Puyi<\/a>, abdicated on February 12, 1912.\u00a0 Here's a photograph of the cover:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\" align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/~bgzimmer\/foochow.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Click to embiggen\" src=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/~bgzimmer\/foochow.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" \/><\/a><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>This is the first edition of the book, published by the Foochow College Press in 1912.<\/p>\n<p>It's a little bit tricky to read the Chinese.\u00a0 If you get the knack, though, you can see that it says:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Zh\u014dnghu\u00e1 m\u00edngu\u00f3 \u00a0\u00a0 r\u00e9nx\u012bn d\u00e0t\u00f3ng<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">\u4e2d\u83ef\u6c11\u570b\u00a0\u00a0 \u4eba\u5fc3\u5927\u540c<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">\"Republic of China\u00a0\u00a0 Great Unity of the People's Hearts\"<\/p>\n<p>You first read the characters written in black, then you read the characters in white superimposed upon them.\u00a0 Neat, eh?<\/p>\n<p>I don't think I've ever seen exactly this sort of playful writing before.\u00a0 Cl\u00e9ment styles it \"nested\" or \"superimposed\".<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cl\u00e9ment Pit-Claudel writes: I was recently at the Boston antiquarian book fair, where I spotted a book titled\u00a0The Battle of Foochow\u00a0about the\u00a0Fuzhou Uprising\u00a0of November 8, 1911, in which revolutionaries defeated the Qing (Manchu) army, a significant step on the way to the fall of the last dynasty in traditional Chinese history, when the six-year-old\u00a0Last Emperor,\u00a0Puyi, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[85,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46036"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46049,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46036\/revisions\/46049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}