Culture Moment: Our Chinese Heritage

Chinese character support is required to fully view this post. Please PM me if you need help.

When we look at the various arms of our nation, we see a recurring symbol. It appears on our Lesser State Seal (above), as well as in the Greater State Arms, Lesser State Arms, and the arms of his Majesty the King.To many, it's just a strange bit of Chinese that found its way into our country. But a closer examination of the Chinese symbol "賁" reveals that it is analogous to the story of Talossa as a whole.

In Ár Päts (2005), the former King Robert I recounts in a strangely brief fashion the selection of this central symbol of his new country:"Ben had also discovered a Chinese character pronounced 'Ben,' which means 'energetic, strenuous, brave,' etc. For obvious reasons, this character, 'the Ben Symbol,' became our coat of arms."

If you think this glossing over is a strange choice, considering the importance of this symbol, then you're not alone. While a historian and language buff, the young Ben Madison never had much of an interest in Asian studies, eventually preferring to concentrate on early American and Mormon histories above all, and seldom including any tastes of Asian languages in his creation and evolution of Talossan. This is not surprising - Talossan is a predominantly romance language - but it makes it even stranger he would make a Chinese symbol his primary representation.

Many Westerners are fascinated with Chinese symbols, whose pictograms can represent complex and beautiful sentiments in a way that seems more like art than language. Indeed, some people's enthusiasm for characters that they do not actually understand has led them to get terribly mistaken tattoos (such as those described on this blog). So it's not hard to imagine young Ben as a similar dilettante, sitting in a library looking at language books (as he so frequently did) and delighting when he found a phonetic resemblance between his name and one of these magical characters. And like so many others, he seized upon it immediately in his delight.

Chinese characters (or sinographs) are the oldest form of writing still used today, and are employed in various forms by such cultures as China, Japan, and Korea. Originating in small part as pictograms (simplified visual representations of the word) or in the larger measure as ideograms (representations of abstractions) and associated compound words, Chinese characters have an extremely rich and elaborate history that makes it dangerous for the uninitiated to dabble. And so it would not have been a surprise if young Ben had picked a character that meant "annoying brat" or had the double meaning of "tyrant" or something similarly embarrassing. Indeed, with a symbol that can have a half-dozen different meanings, one might almost expect at least one strange use.

But as happened so often in Talossan history, a flight of whimsy proved to be a stroke of brilliant luck, and became indelibly traced on the face of the country.

Ben used the traditional script version of 賁. Made larger, it looks like this: 賁 The symbol is Unicode "U+8CC1," and is rendered in simplified Mandarin as the more stylized "贲." In Chinese, it does indeed mean "energetic," and additionally means "to forge ahead [through adversity]." It has also been used as a surname, most notably by as the pre-enthronement first emperor of Vietnam, Lý Nam Đế (李南帝), who was born Lý Bôn (李賁) and is remembered for his unification of the Vietnamese armies and repelling of the invading Chinese Liang dynasty. Very little to be embarrassed about!

Interestingly, this symbol is also the title for one of the hexagrams (or chapters) of the I Ching. This ancient book used for divination in China can have a wide variety of disastrous results, especially for such a random character. But again, Talossa's luck holds. Hexagram 22, 賁, is translated as "Grace" or "Luxuriance;" as translated by Wilhelm, it predicts for the divinator:
"Grace has success.
In small matters
It is favorable to undertake something."

Favorable to undertake something, indeed!

How many times have we seen a flight of fancy become a solemn tradition in our great nation? The convenient availability of fountain drinks led to the declaration of the importance of Taco Bell and Talossan tradition. The discovery of an old coin became a landmark of "evidence" for the Berber Hypothesis, itself the product of a whim. And the "Ben" symbol, chosen almost certainly with the briefest touch of knowledge by a boy, but becoming the heart of a vibrant nation and her cultural traditions!



This Culture Moment has been brought to you by the Government of Talossa.

Alexander Davis

Seneschal del Regipäts Talossan