Simplified Chinese characters could have a longer history than most people think, according to archeologists in northwestern Shaanxi Province, who have recently found an ancient stone roller ingrained with the simple, present version of the character "wan", which stands for "10,000" in Chinese.

The roller, 2.1 meters in diameter and 48 centimeters thick, was spotted in Qinghua village of Meixian county, under the jurisdiction of Baoji city, said officials with the county's cultural heritage bureau.

The mammoth stone had been left unattended outside a villagers' courtyard when it enticed the officials' interest during a recent survey in the village. Inscriptions on the roller suggested it was built during the reign of emperor Wan Li (1573 - 1620), during the imperial Ming Dynasty, that lasted from 1368 to 1644.

The character "Wan" in the emperor's name was in a simplified form but the rest of the text -- mainly names of donors who had sponsored the building of the roller -- was in the Chinese in complex form, as was the customs in China before the central imperial court government called on the entire nation to use unified, simplified characters, after the People's Republic was founded in 1949, said Liu Huaijun, an official with the county cultural museum.

The character "Wan" on a second stone roller unearthed in a nearby village, however, was in complex Chinese, Liu noted, though it dated back to the same period in history.

"It means both versions of the character 'wan' were in use in those days," he said, "The two rollers may provide crucial clues to researchers on the evolution of the written Chinese as well as the folk customs in the region."

Sources say that Mei Ying, an established scholar of the Ming Dynasty, had compiled a wordbook on the use of simplified Chinese. In 1938, the then ruling Kuomintang government also tried to promote Chinese characters in simplified form, but with little effect.

The Chinese government began standardizing the written Chinese language in 1952, and today, the ancient, complex characters are Beijing used mainly in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.
 
(Xinhua Nwes Agency February 17, 2004)