Want to be a hero? Pick one of the following tasks: A. rescue a maiden; B. win a battle; C. save the world. If you can speak Chinese, there's another option: master writing all the Chinese characters. But the task might not be as easy as it sounds, even for native speakers. 

This summer, more than 100 people were challenged with dictation tasks concerning common Chinese words and idioms throughHero of Hanzi(Chinese Characters), a talent show produced by Henan Satellite TV that has aired since July. The contestants were teenagers aged seven to 17, but the sensation they spurred caused reverberations through the adult world, too.

Twenty-Five-year-old magazine editor Zhang Linlin was one of the viewers. With a pencil in hand, Zhang tried to write down each character along with contestants, but apparently she had no chance to become a hero. "With a language-focused job, I failed on over half the characters," said Zhang. Surprised by the embarrassing result, she said, "it's weird to see yourself being so bad at writing your own language."

But Zhang was by no means alone. According to a survey after the show, less than 50 percent of Chinese can correctly write "jianxie(intermittence)," and over 70 percent of adults don't have a clue about the word "laihama(toad)."

The hit show boosted interest in Chinese hand-writing skills, which have generally been deteriorating in the wake of the technology revolution. A mobile phone game was soon devised to cater to people's eagerness to test themselves. But for scholars studying Chinese language, the phenomenon indicated something more serious than a game. Many perceived the phenomenon as a possible crisis for the Chinese language. 

Many students are unable to learn and practice calligraphy at primary school

Elusive characters

Due to a unique logographic writing system, Chinese is more susceptible to this type of crisis than most languages. Different from an alphabetic writing system, Chinese has developed thousands of complex signs, instead of a few dozen letters, to represent morphemes and words. "Once you memorize the alphabet, you can write Arabic instantly. But Chinese is different," said an Egyptian woman studying inBeijingwho preferred to be quoted with her Chinese name, Wang Xiao.

In addition, modern Chinese has many homophones; thus the same spoken syllable may be represented by many different characters, depending on meaning. For both natives and foreign learners, memorizing all characters could be a life-long task. After living inChinafor years, Wang can speak and lecture fluently in Chinese. But meanwhile, she admits to relying on the dictionary app in her phone to clarify writing.

It is often said that knowledge of 2,000 words is enough to read an English newspaper, and 2,500 characters will do the same in a Chinese context. However, an educated English native speaker is unlikely to forget the spelling of those words, while most Chinese occasionally stumble on common words. A survey carried out byChina Youth Dailyshows that 98.9 percent of respondents have encountered the embarrassment of "character amnesia."

Luckily, the elusive characters don't bother people in the digital era. Thepinyinsystem (a phonetic system) developed in the 1950s makes it possible to input Chinese through an English keyboard, and more conveniently, there's no need to memorize the complex composition of the logographic characters.   

But many Chinese scholars believe the convenience causes a problem. Digitally inputting characters speeds up the deterioration of handwriting memory, due to lack of writing practice. The advent of portable digital devices, like smart phones and ipads, undoubtedly worsens the situation. The survey shows that only 38.9 percent of Chinese still handwrite every day.

"Our life has already been exposed to shallow reading and fast food culture; we replace the pen with the keyboard. We are getting increasingly far away from character writing," said Jiang Lansheng, Chairman of the Lexicographical Society of China. "If we don't curb the trend, we have every reason to worry about the future of Chinese handwriting. Maybe the ironic story will come true that Chinese natives cannot write in Chinese."

On the other hand, some believe the phenomenon signals a deeper crisis, one that centers on preserving the Chinese culture more than it does on improving individual handwriting skills.

"We cannot have digital devices take all the responsibility. Shall we kick computers out of our life just because of our bad handwriting skills? To build a sustainable future for Chinese characters, it's crucial to have the entire people educated and cultured and stir consistent desire for that," said Wang Ning, Professor at Beijing Normal University.

Heightened attention

The potentialhanzicrisis again highlights the absence of traditional Chinese culture in education. "Most students are not able to learn and practice calligraphy at primary school," said Xie Yong, who teaches Chinese at Beijing Lu Xun High School. "Parents and teachers are zealous in sending their children to learn mathematics and English rather than about traditional culture, mainly due to admission requirements at key middle schools."

Fingers were particularly pointed at the emphasis placed on Chinese kids to learn English. Earlier in September, Wang Xuming, former Spokesman of the Ministry of Education, called through his Weibo (a Chinese microblog) to "cancel English class and enforce studies of Chinese ancient civilization in the elementary education" to save Chinese language and culture.  

Against this backdrop, the Ministry of Education is planning on a policy to ease emphasis of English in mandatory examinations in primary schools.

As a fan ofHero of Hanzi, Zhang don't agree with the idea of eliminating English from elementary education. "To compete under the globalization context, it's still important to master English, but we do have to pay more attention to our native languages and traditional culture," Zhang said.

Since September, Zhang has made a daily plan to practice her writing skills. "The program reminds me of the beauty of Chinese calligraphy that I have been proud of. I want to be a master of it again."