On a bus to Hong Kong, at the very last row, there sat my mum and I.

“What should you do if you ever get lost in Hong Kong?” She asked me.

“I should wait at the same place and never talk to strangers.” I repeated the same answer for the hundredth time, while secretly murmuring, “I am already nine years old and capable of taking care of myself.”

My mum, as a typical Cantonese, learnt the original Chinese characters and Cantonese in the first place, then the following simplified form of Chinese characters and Mandarin. However, knowing that I grew up in an environment filled with Mandarin and simplified Chinese characters only, she became more and more concerned about my first trip to Hong Kong.

She sighed, “God, I wish you take this seriously. You cannot communicate with Hong Kong people since they neither speak Mandarin nor use simplified forms of Chinese characters words that we mainland Chinese use daily.”

I nodded, eagerly hoping to end her nagging.

After two incredibly long hours, we finally reached Hong Kong.

“Okay, we should take another bus to Victoria Harbor,” she held my hands tightly, “let’s see where the bus stop is…”I looked around casually and found a red sign written “?????,” on which I pondered for a few seconds, and then I recognized its meaning—“Victoria Harbor.”

“Mum, should we go that way?” I pointed at the sign and asked my mum.

My mum looked at me surprisingly with her mouth wide open, “How…how can you read those original Chinese characters?”

I replied vaguely, “I am not sure… It seems like I just know their meanings, naturally.” Later on that trip, every time I found out the meanings of different original Chinese characters, I could not help but shouted them out loud excitedly, enjoying the astonished look on my mum’s face, which made me feel proud of my newly discovered “talent”—the ability to distinguish original Chinese characters spontaneously, without official study.

After the trip to Hong kong, I immediately flaunted my amazing experience about recognizing original Chinese characters to my friends, who grew up in mainland China lacking experience of learning original Chinese characters, just like me. And I expected some shocking looks or admiration on their faces.

Heedlessly, with slight indifference, a friend of mine responded, “It is not such a big deal. I know original Chinese characters as well.”

“Yeah, I know them too.” Another friend of mine chimed.

Completely out of expectations, I found myself standing there awkwardly like a ballon leaking air away. I murmured, “I thought I was so talented that only I could know those complicated words…”

Laughters bursted out. “Talent? Of course not! All Chinese kids can do that,” they explained to me carelessly, “it is like some sort of instinct.” 

Frustrated and confused, I talked about this to my mum, hoping to figure out the reason why everyone in my school was able to do so, but my mum was simply shocked.

“I don’t know how you guys did it at all,” she sighed while shaking her head, “maybe the world has changed, and the education you guys received is more diverse, which makes you so good at handling different languages.” 

Puzzling questions emerged: How could my peers and I understand original Chinese characters without learning it? What external factor or internal determinant influenced us? Was it talent or instinct? They kept haunting in my head, causing me confusion as well as frustration from time to time, and I had always been struggling for an answer. Sometimes after encountering original Chinese characters, I would keep thinking about them all day long and even could not sleep at night because of these annoying puzzles.

However, a clear answer to these questions did not show up until I went on my second trip to Hong Kong six years later.

This time in Hong Kong, on a taxi, I sat alone next to the car window, mindlessly staring at the outside view. Lights and billboards flashed slowly and sometimes stuck steadily in front of me, because of the terrible traffic jam.

“????” written on a huge red billboard caught my attention. It was the Chinese title of a famous Hong Kong movie named The Way Of The Dragon, which reminded me of the old days that I spent with my parents watching classic Hong Kong movies. I remembered the fancy and exaggerated fighting skills of action actors. More than that, I remembered the conspicuous subtitles in the form of original Chinese characters accompanying every movie. On one hand, I could not understand any Cantonese dialogues without the translation offered by subtitles; on the other hand, back to the age of three or four years old, I could hardly read Chinese characters, not to mention the original complicated ones, which the subtitles were composed of, leading to the dilemma that I could only stare at the images shown on the screen and guess about the plot, while occasionally glancing at the subtitles. Apart from movies, I realized my childhood also in frequent contact with entertainment products full of original Chinese characters that I could hardly interpret that time, including various foreign comic books translated in the form of original Chinese characters, and multiple story books published in Taiwan or Hong Kong. As a result, external diffusion of language happened subtlety, through movie subtitles or comic captions as medium into my language system, forming some kind of linguistic instinct towards original Chinese characters, in other words, the ability to distinguish them spontaneously without official study. While pulling out memories from the old times, I suddenly realized that I was so familiar with the simplified version of Chinese characters that I had been ignoring the striking similarity between original Chinese characters and the simplified ones, a more direct determinant that could

cause linguistic instinct. For instance, “?????,” the first original Chinese characters that I encountered in Hong Kong, were composed of two original Chinese characters that were different from the simplified versions, including “?” and “?.” More specifically, “?” the original form, compared to “?” the simplified version, was exactly the same in the right component “?” but different in the left component; the former  “?” consisted of three dot strokes while the latter “?” of only one horizontal stroke. Such a simplified version did not change much of its original structure but only cut out several cumbersome strokes. Analogically, the original character “?” and the simplified form “?” both consisted of one horizontal stroke on the top and another at the bottom, as well as the protruding shape of the middle component. Therefore, based on my adequate familiarity with the simplified versions of Chinese, I could quickly distinguish the alikeness between original Chinese characters and the simplified versions, and then recognized them naturally. In this way, linguistic instinct was formed.

Immersing in my own thoughts, I did not notice the taxi had arrived at the destination until the taxi driver abruptly turned round and loudly asked me for money. I paid the driver, got off the taxi, and took a deep breath, with an enlightened mood as well as a sense of relief.

Ultimately, I found my answer.

It has never been about talent, but linguistic instinct—the natural recognition of another form of unfamiliar language that is somehow similar or connected to the daily used language. In addition, linguistic instinct can be generated from both internal familiarity of the daily used language and external language diffusion. For me, due to my interior familiarity of simplified Chinese characters and the exterior dispersion of traditional Chinese characters, I have some sort of spontaneous identification of original Chinese characters. The same works for my peers and anyone who has similar background like mine.

With the realization of linguistic instinct, I am free from confusion and frustration caused by unsolved lexical puzzles, like a heavy stone dangling in my heart is finally moved away. More importantly, such realization largely adds on my confidence when I am confronted with original Chinese characters and meanwhile stimulates my interest for learning traditional Chinese characters systematically. I am sure that I can learn them well easily with the help of linguistic instinct, and I want to do so because there may be some unexplored aspects of original Chinese characters as well as potential for further exploration of linguistic instinct, which to some extent induces my curiosity and even passion for language.

Interesting traditional Chinese characters and interesting linguistic instinct, aren’t they?