Sinosphere

Sinosphere, also known as East Asian Cultural Sphere, Chinese world, Chinese cultural sphere or Chinese-character cultural sphere, is a grouping of countries that have a majority Chinese population or were historically under heavy Chinese cultural influence. It is a network common wealth between Chinese people around the world. It is different from Greater China which is including China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Sinosphere is consisting of Greater China, and some overseas countries which have big number of Chinese population in Southeast Asia, such as Malaysia and Singapore.

One of the main unifying links is based on the Chinese language. The area is mainly agricultural nation in ancient times. Earlier than 1900, all the countries in the area used Chinese characters as a major part of writing system. Need to be noted that, the countries in Chinese cultural sphere did not use Mandarin as a spoken language. In addition, some nomadic tribes in north of the Chinese cultural sphere never used Chinese characters.

Other specifics are including drinking tea, the use of chopsticks, use of writing brush to write, and use of tile to the construction, which also originate in China.

Twice the foreign nation’s dynasty rule China and Cultural Revolution made China lost most important details of traditional culture. Here are the losses of traditional Chinese culture. The first is about Chinese food culture. Most of us must remember this Idiom called脍炙人口. It means the great popularity. But unfortunately, in modern time, Kuai is Sashimi as Zhi is to Korean BBQ. The second is about Chinese cloth culture. Now, the Tang suit is the modern style of Manchu cloth. And we never see a person with Han Chinese cloth outside. But in Japan, Kimono is everywhere. Japanese kimono is the Han dynasty and the Jin dynasty fashion clothing evolved.

It called礼失于朝而存诸野。

After the Opium War of 1840, China's international status become lower. After World War II, the countries in the sphere without China start the policy of stop using of Chinese characters.

But after 1990, the point of Chinese characters is East Asian common words begun to emerge. And the countries, which were the pasts of Chinese cultural sphere in ancient but lost Chinese characters in the modern, began to aware of the importance of Chinese characters. So that, the voices of resurrecting Chinese character appeared.