I thought I ought to explain the large calligraphy character that dominates my blog page and the cover of my novel as well. It is Chinese for 'bin shu' which is the phonetic pronunciation of the Chinese word that means 'endure', my title of course.
I don't write or read Chinese myself, but it's a fascinating language. Interestingly, until the Communist Revolution of 1949, there were many Chinese language groups and sub-groups, based on geography and ethnicity. The Communists were successful in making the Mandarin dialect of Chinese the standard language of communication, education and publishing.
I am interested to hear from anyone if they think that Mao and the Communists chose Mandarin, the northern dialect, where they were based for close to 20 years, rather than Cantonese from the South, where the Nationalist, Kuomintang party was much stronger.
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