Tang Meng Wei

In recent years, many Russian students have chosen Taiwan as a place to study Chinese. During the pandemic, Taiwan, much earlier than Mainland China, opened its borders to foreign students, including Russian students and undergraduates. But it should not be forgotten that the Chinese language on the mainland and in Taiwan is different: the mainlanders speak Putonghua, the Taiwanese speak Guoyu. The differences concern not only writing systems (traditional and simplified characters), phonetic notation systems (Pinyin and Zhuyin), vocabulary, grammar, but also punctuation. This is primarily due to the fact that governments on both sides of the Taiwan Strait have been pursuing different language policies since 1949. During this time, punctuation on the mainland and on the island has also undergone changes. This article explains the difference between punctuation marks in mainland China and Taiwan in detail, thereby introducing students and teachers of the Chinese language to the features of Guoyu. The authors retrospectively consider the policy of the mainland and the island in relation to punctuation, and also analyze those features of punctuation that are necessary to know in order to avoid mistakes or misunderstanding of what is written with examples. The article describes the differences between Mainland China and Taiwan in the use of quotation marks, smart quotation marks, brackets, and raises the issue of quotation formatting. In addition, the problem of different arrangement of punctuation marks on the line is touched upon. This article will be useful to anyone who studies or teaches Chinese, as well as to those who write scientific papers and works in Chinese.

Taiwan’s uniqueness in geographical position, and political-economic situation contributes to its special status in the Chinese-speaking world. As one of the most important transport hubs located between the Eurasian continent and the Pacific Ocean, for centuries Taiwan has been the focal point of attention of the European and Asian countries. Since the 17th century, European maritime powers (the Dutch, then the Spaniards) occupied the southern and northern parts of the island. In the second half of the 17th century, with the strengthening of East Asian states’ role, Taiwan was under control of general Zheng Chenggong of Ming Dynasty, and his descendants. Subsequently, the island was governed by Qing Dynasty, imperial Japan and the government of the Republic of China. Constant change of power over the past five centuries has contributed to the formation of a unique linguistic system in Taiwan, and the influence of the cultures of the indigenous Austronesian peoples, European and Japanese colonialists, and immigrants from Southeast Asia has contributed to the special cultural identity of its population. Taiwan has come a long way from autocracy to democracy. During the reign of five political forces, the multi-component model of the language policy, taking into account the interests of immigrants from Mainland China and aborigines of Taiwan, was repeatedly replaced by a single-component one (in the center of which there were alternately Japanese and Chinese languages). In the modern period, there is a pluralistic language policy focused on the harmonious co-functioning of the languages of the peoples on the island. This article attempts to examine the dynamics of the language policy of various political forces that ruled in Taiwan since the 16th century, and to analyze the process of the formation of the so-called “Taiwanese identity”.

The article examines the synthesis of Chinese classical and Western modernist literary traditions in Bai Xianyong’s Taipei People using the story “Wandering in the Garden, Waking from a Dream”.