TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Chinese and Japanese youth are forgetting how to write characters:

Yet aged just 21 and now a university student in Hong Kong, Li already finds that when she picks up a pen to write, the characters for words as simple as “embarrassed” have slipped from her mind.

“I can remember the shape, but I can’t remember the strokes that you need to write it,” she says.

They’re forgetting because they communicate mostly by mobile phone and computer now, which use pinyin. When users type in a word, the device gives them a selection of characters that match. It’s faster to use pinyin than it is to draw characters so most people use it. It only requires people to recognize characters, rather than remember each character’s strokes.

Sad. Chinese is a beautiful language to write in, but characters might not be around much longer.