Exhortations to “write standard characters” appear on banners and billboards throughout Beijing. This full-page spread in The Beijing News on Tuesday announces itself as a “public service advertisement,” (ÂÖ¨ÁõäÂπøÂëä), only the composer has mistakenly replaced “public welfare” (ÂÖ¨Áõä) with the homophone “justice” (ÂÖ¨‰πâ). The copy (click the image for the full thing) reads:
Chinese characters are among the world’s oldest writing, and are a treasure of cultural riches for the Chinese people as well as all of world civilization. Every Chinese person should respect Chinese characters and use Chinese characters properly….[Full Text]
(Smaller characters on the photo read “The country promotes Mandarin and the use of standard characters.”)
