On Typing Chinese

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With TikTok, RedNote, and DeepSeek dominating the news cycles, I’m glad there’s more interest in what the Chinese digital experience looks like. This week, Afra Wang writes about how she learned to type.

—Tianyu Fang, Reboot Editorial Board

On Typing Chinese

By Afra Wang

Beijing Capital International Airport, summer of 2003. I stood beside my father, watching a flight attendant’s growing frustration as she grappled with her computer.

My name, Zhao (曌), is a rare Chinese character, composed of three elements representing “the sun and moon in the sky above.” It was invented by and used as the name for Empress Wu Zetian of the Tang Dynasty. In the age of Smart ABC and personal computers, however, it seemed to slip through an invisible techno-linguistic abyss.

The user interface of Smart ABC

“I'm sorry,” she says, “but I can't print your boarding pass yet. Your first name is too rare… it's not in the database.”

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My experience at the airport was more than a personal inconvenience. It was a modern manifestation of a century-long struggle to reconcile the vast complexity of the Chinese writing system with the constraints of modern technology.

In The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age, historian Tom Mullaney introduces the concept of “hypography,” the process of writing through an intermediary system of encoding and decoding. Hypography is the secret code to a chest of tens of thousands of Chinese characters. Just as a skilled locksmith can open a complex safe with a few precise movements, a proficient typist can produce a wealth of Chinese text using seemingly random keystrokes on a QWERTY keyboard.

At that airport kiosk, the flight attendant's attempt to input my name exemplified this concept. She typed “Z, H, A, O," prompting Smart ABC (“智能 ABC”) to display all Chinese characters that are romanized in Hanyu Pinyin as zhao. It showed her 找 (zhǎo, to search) and 照 (zhào, to shine). But my rare and complex given name, 曌, was lost in this hypographic transliteration.

Hypography is a lens through which we can examine the very nature of typing. In the West, typing is often following what Mullaney called the “what-you-type-is-what-you-get framework”—an almost unconscious act. But between Latin keyboards and character-based languages like Chinese, there’s often an intermediary step—input method editors (IMEs) like Smart ABC—that comes into play. The input appears in a left bar, while a right panel displays matching Chinese characters or phrases; the user then selects the desired option by pressing the corresponding number key. The act of typing, therefore, is a constant negotiation between thought and machine, an act of endless encoding and decoding.

For most Chinese people using computers in the early 2000s, Smart ABC was their gateway to digital communication. It was invented in 1993 by Zhu Shoutao, a professor at Peking University, and became ubiquitous after Microsoft integrated it into Windows 98, Me, and 2000.

Smart ABC operates on a principle of contextual prediction which the 8-year-old me found both ingenious and disappointing. Because each Pinyin input can correspond to dozens of different characters, the software must rely on context to guess the most probable character combinations. For instance, the input wo yields 我 (wǒ, I/me) as the most likely character; but if followed by the consonant m, the query wom would yield 我们 (wǒ mén, we/us). It's “smart,” but sometimes frustratingly time-consuming, especially for rarer characters.

Today, the Pinyin keyboard on macOS uses a design that resembles Smart ABC.

Mullaney argues that this hypographic process creates a persistent, structural mismatch that prevents Chinese computing from settling into the same kind of complacency found in conventional models of human-machine interaction. While in English typing, the relationship between keys and symbols can sink into the bottom of consciousness like a pebble in a lake, Chinese input constantly reminds users of the arbitrariness of this relationship. As Mullaney puts it, it's like “prosecco bubbles rising and bursting into the realm of critical awareness, over and over again.”

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While Pinyin IMEs like Smart ABC were based on Chinese phonetics, it wasn’t intuitive at first that the keyboard must represent how words are pronounced. In 2001, when my father brought home our first PC in China, he chose a different path. Like many from his generation, he taught himself Wubi, or “five strokes.”

Wubi keyboard

Wubi, which predated Smart ABC, was a testament to Chinese ingenuity in the face of technological constraints. Wubi reflected how characters were written, not vocalized. Invented by programmer Wang Yongmin in 1983, it breaks down the vast complexity of Chinese characters into five basic stroke types: horizontal (一), vertical (丨), left-falling (丿), right-falling (丶), and hook (乙). Each stroke type corresponds to a specific area on the QWERTY keyboard, transforming the act of typing Chinese into a kind of digital calligraphy.

I remember my father’s determination to master Wubi: He practiced on his keyboard day and night and muttered Wubi’s shorthand mnemonics in his sleep. His choice was partly a necessity. Growing up in rural Shandong, his grasp of Pinyin, which is based on China’s “standard” dialect of Mandarin, was shaky—a consequence of an education system that prioritized rote memorization over phonetic understanding. But it was also a choice that placed him squarely within a specific generation of Chinese computer users.

From 1995 to 2000, as computers proliferated across China, Wubi rode a wave of popularity. At its peak, it was the chosen method for over 90% of computer users in China. But this dominance was short-lived, creating a stark generational divide—as Pinyin-based input methods improved their predictive text capabilities, Wubi’s speed advantage diminished.

Meanwhile, as digital forms of communication proliferated, young people rarely handwrite Chinese characters anymore. Without knowing the exact radicals of each Chinese character, one wouldn’t be able to use the Wubi method. As one article aptly put it, “People born in the 70s and 80s learned [Wubi], those born in the 90s partially encountered it, while those born after 2000 never used it.”

Between Wubi and Smart ABC, mastery of the Chinese keyboard required a formal introduction. While some took classes, most Chinese PC users of my generation honed their skills with Kingsoft Typing (金山打字通), a typing practice software. The 2003 version of this software was ubiquitous, installed on virtually every PC in homes, schools, and offices across China.

Kingsoft’s typing game

I have vivid memories of competing with my father on this software, our fingers flying across the keys as we raced to improve our speed and accuracy. In primary school, Kingsoft’s typing games were the only online games we were allowed to play during our weekly computer classes. Like many millennial mini-games, these games have simple designs, graphics, and a dramatic name. In Life or Death Speed, users chase criminals by correctly typing words shown at the bottom of the game screen. Typing without errors helps you run faster. In Space War, you’re in control of a cannon that strikes enemy spaceships. You must correctly type letters or words that appear on the screen to destroy the spaceships. These games are vivid memories for many when they were first properly introduced to keyboards and learning to type.

This formal introduction to the keyboard is not unique to Chinese users, but it takes on special significance in the context of character-based writing systems. Languages like Hindi, Bengali, and Tamil face similar challenges, requiring users to input Latin characters that are then converted to the appropriate script. Arabic and Persian introduce another layer of complexity, with right-to-left typing and connected scripts necessitating special keyboard layouts.

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Typing, seemingly a mundane act we perform countless times a day, is both a barrier and a privilege. Typing or digital literacy is a microcosm of a larger divide that cuts across generations, socioeconomic classes, and geographic regions in China.

Those born into the age of smartphones and tablets never had a formal introduction to the PC. They've never known a world where digital literacy was a skill to be consciously acquired rather than an ambient part of daily life—generational divides created by breakneck progress.

But in 2001, not all Chinese families could afford a PC or invest the time to learn complex input methods; China had 22.5 million internet users, only 2.1% of the population. In those days, my father and I were our family’s digital pioneers—the only two who could master a QWERTY keyboard. But even with more than a billion internet users in China today, representing some 78% of the population, access doesn't equate to equality. The remaining 22%—over 300 million people—are largely left behind.

The digital divide is particularly stark across generations. My grandmother, now in her 80s, never learned Pinyin at school. For her, each digital interaction is a struggle against time and technology. She laboriously inputs messages using handwriting recognition, her trembling fingers betraying her in the face of a small, unforgiving screen. Her digital world is one of constant negotiation and patience.

“Typing” the word “reboot” using iPhone’s Chinese handwriting IME

My aunt, in her 60s and illiterate, navigates this same “universal” internet in an entirely different way. Undeterred by her inability to read or write, she's carved out her own digital niche. Her WeChat feed is a busy tapestry of voice messages, photos, and lip-synced music videos. For her, the written word is an obstacle creatively circumvented, not an insurmountable barrier. These aren't isolated cases. They represent millions of older Chinese, particularly women, who find themselves on the fringes of the digital revolution. The disparity is even more severe for more complex online activities like online shopping or digital payments.

Their experiences shatter the illusion of a monolithic, text-based internet accessible to all. They live in a digital world of lengthy voice messages and videos with floating static text. The corners of the internet they inhabit are alien to the tech-savvy but no less real or novel to them. Digital literacy means a spectrum of competencies shaped by individual experiences and cultural context.

The COVID-19 pandemic threw this digital divide into sharp relief. During Shanghai's unprecedented lockdown in 2022, elderly residents faced significant challenges using smartphones to access essential services, order groceries, or book medical appointments. Handwritten grocery lists and thank-you notes circulated on Chinese social media, a reminder of those left behind by the rapid digitization. The myth of internet universalism not only fails to account for these varied experiences but also risks marginalizing those who don’t conform to digital native norms.

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As I entered high school, my digital world expanded exponentially through social media—often accessing a wealth of information beyond China’s digital border through VPNs. There, I read about U.S. college applications, and stumbled upon eye-opening journalism on the Arab Spring, Liu Xiaobo's writings, and buried chapters of modern Chinese history. I dreamed of studying in the U.S., but it did require me to take a break from the iPhone’s sleek touchscreen and return to the physical keyboard.

As I prepared for this leap across the Pacific, I encountered an unexpected hurdle. The Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), required a skill I hadn’t much considered: typing in English. Starting in 2005, the exam has offered computer tests, and its writing section required prospective university applicants to type two essays under a hard time limit. It was a crucible that tested not just my language skills, but my very relationship with technology. To my surprise and dismay, I discovered that my fingers, so nimble with Chinese characters, stumbled clumsily over English words. This wasn't merely a matter of language proficiency, but because the act of “typing in English” felt utterly foreign.

In 2012, I came to California for school. For the first time, I became the “left-behind” when it came to typing. The QWERTY keyboard, once a domain I had mastered, now felt like an obstacle for class note-taking. In classes, I watched my American peers effortlessly typing lengthy notes while I needed to constantly stop for unfamiliar concepts and vocabulary.

What was once familiar to me was suddenly lost. This experience was more than just the typical immigrant’s culture shock; I could empathize on a deeper level with my grandmother's trembling hands on a little screen and my aunt’s voice messages in a text-based world. Beyond mere inconvenience, I felt a subtle but persistent sense of exclusion.

This digital otherness I felt wasn’t born from a lack of technological advancement. On the contrary, it stemmed from the realization that my school’s systems and exam environments assumed rapid typing skills and proficient English. Their evolution, their progress, and their sophistication seemed to have occurred in parallel to my own digital journey, hardly intersecting. I felt grief for my previous effortless digital experience and the inability to use my mother tongue.

Moving to America involved more than a change in physical location; it demanded rewiring my muscle memory, reshaping my neural pathways, and even recalibrating my intuitions to adapt. This steep learning curve served as a constant reminder that countless others were undergoing similar transformations. Literacy—digital or otherwise—often fails to translate across borders.

Behind every sleek interface and “intuitive” design lies a set of cultural and linguistic assumptions, a hidden language that speaks fluently to some while leaving others struggling. And for now, my given name, 曌, was perpetually reduced to its Pinyin spelling “Zhao”—four English letters with a confusing pronunciation to my American peers. The rich history and meaning embedded in those strokes were flattened into a string of Latin characters. My name echoed my new reality: me, a minority in the U.S. Each labored email, each hesitant conversation, each fumbled attempt to express a complex idea in English chipped away at the articulate person I thought I was.

As the world becomes “digital native” by default, the notion itself has become rather anachronistic. Yet, as technological infrastructure dictates that we type in the same way and scroll in the same direction, we might as well take a pause—and make visible the hidden learning curves, the everyday rituals that fail to transcend national borders, and the Chinese characters that went missing from the keyboard.

Afra Wang is a host of the Chinese podcast CyberPink. She currently works in crypto, and she previously studied international history at Columbia and LSE.

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🌀 microdoses

• The first issue of Combinations, a publication under RadicalxChange, is out!

• With Americans migrating to Xiaohongshu, or RedNote, U.S. and Chinese users are comparing living costs with each other.

• @timhwang:

  

💝 closing note

Here’s a reminder that Kernel 5 fiction/creative submissions are still open this week—please submit your pieces here as soon as possible!

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—Tian & Reboot team