Since 1980s, under the influence of language and culture craze, the study of Chinese character culture has gradually formed a craze, and a group of young and middle-aged scholars have written books and expressed great interest in the study of Chinese character culture, and achieved certain results. However, it is undeniable that these studies are still lacking in depth, and most of them are isolated descriptions of cultural phenomena reflected by some individual characters. Some works often make various mistakes in specific operations and lack the necessary scientific nature. The crux of the problem is that the theoretical discussion of Chinese character culture research is still very poor, and a complete theoretical framework has not been established. Some important basic theoretical issues, such as the definition of Chinese characters' cultural concepts, the explanation of the relationship between Chinese characters and culture, and the measurement of Chinese characters' cultural functions, still have many vague understandings. Therefore, accelerating the theoretical construction is an urgent task in the study of Chinese character culture.

I. Definition of "Chinese Character Culture"

Correctly defining the concept of "Chinese character culture" and scientifically explaining the relationship between Chinese characters and culture are the fundamental problems to be solved by Chinese character culture theory.

At present, people's definition of "Chinese character culture" reveals some characteristics of Chinese character culture from different angles, but the overall research is not enough, the excavation is not too deep, and the generalization is not too comprehensive. We believe that the definition of "Chinese character culture" should focus on both macro and micro perspectives. Macro-Chinese character culture refers to the cultural connotation embodied by the basic laws of Chinese character origin, evolution and configuration; Micro-Chinese character culture refers to all kinds of cultural information carried by Chinese characters themselves and reflected by their structures. Macro Chinese character culture is based on micro Chinese character culture. Therefore, in the research steps, we should start from the micro, gradually accumulate materials, sum up the laws, and then rise to the macro research. However, microscopic research is not to analyze a single Chinese character in isolation, but to study the whole Chinese character system, focusing on the macro background and taking macro research as the ultimate goal. No matter whether it is a macro study of Chinese character culture or a micro study of Chinese character culture, we should take Chinese characters as the center and the factors of Chinese characters as the fundamental starting point, instead of dragging things that do not belong to Chinese characters in without Chinese characters.

To scientifically explain the relationship between Chinese characters and culture, we must first understand the respective essence of Chinese characters and culture. As far as Chinese characters are concerned, it is a writing symbol system for recording Chinese, and its appearance is mainly to meet the shortage of audio language. In this regard, Chen Li in the Qing Dynasty once made a wonderful description: "Covering everything in the world, people are interested in it every day; If you want to achieve it, you have a say. Meaning, like things and constitute a person; Sound, like meaning and composition. Sound cannot spread in different places, but stays in different times, so books are words. Writer, so it is the trace of Italian sound. " [1] (P8) The meaning is abstract and cannot be perceived by the sensory organs; Sound is lost in the vertical direction and can only act on auditory organs, but not on visual organs. Although it can be a symbol of meaning, it could not be transmitted to different places and stayed in different times in ancient times when technology was backward. With the development of human society, it is urgent to exchange ideas in a broader space-time range. This demand contributed to the birth of written symbols. As a writing symbol for recording Chinese, Chinese characters materialize the meaning and sound of Chinese with a special symbol, thus expanding the communicative function of Chinese. It can be seen that the most fundamental function of Chinese characters is to record Chinese, and whether it corresponds to Chinese characters is the decisive condition to judge whether a symbol is a Chinese character. Chinese is the carrier of various social cultures. Chinese characters record Chinese, so they are related to culture. As far as culture is concerned, due to the complexity of social culture, the definition of the concept of "culture" has become a difficult problem, and there are hundreds of different theories. Some people think that culture refers exclusively to human spiritual activities, others think that culture includes material wealth and spiritual wealth, and still others think that culture refers to all activities of human society. We tend to17th century German jurist Pufendorf's point of view. In his view, culture is the sum of things created by human activities and things that depend on human and social life. It is the sum total of material and spiritual elements that constantly develop and improve people's social life. According to this definition, Chinese characters are also a cultural phenomenon and an organic part of the whole social and cultural system. The two concepts of "Chinese characters" and "culture" should be the species relationship between the upper and lower positions. However, in the social and cultural structure, the structural components of Chinese characters are bound to be related to other components, so the relationship between Chinese characters and culture is not only the relationship between Chinese characters and the whole cultural system, but also the relationship between Chinese characters and other cultural elements in the whole cultural system except Chinese characters. On this point, Mr. Wang Ning has made a clear dialectical: "The proposition of' Chinese characters and culture' actually belongs to the category of the relationship between cultural items, specifically, it refers to the relationship between Chinese characters and other cultural items. Cultural projects are interrelated. When studying their relationship, we usually get a core item and take other cultural items related to it as the environment of the core item. In other words, we should put the core item at the center of the giant system composed of other cultural items to explore its survival relationship in this giant system. In this way, the proposition of' Chinese characters and culture' is to take Chinese characters as the core item to explore its relationship with other cultural items. " [2](P78) When talking about the relationship between Chinese characters and culture, many scholars always simply correspond the two concepts of "Chinese characters" and "culture", which makes people feel that Chinese characters seem to be independent of culture. It is not advisable to separate "Chinese characters" from "culture".

The position of Chinese characters in the whole cultural system is very special. It is not only one of various cultural projects, but also a carrier for writing and expressing other cultural projects. By recording the words in the language, it preserves all kinds of cultural information reflected by the meaning of words, thus establishing a very close relationship with other cultural projects. The long history and cross-generational characteristics of Chinese characters make them have great cultural and archaeological value and become an important basis for studying historical culture and its changes. This close relationship between Chinese characters and culture makes them have a special relationship of mutual confirmation. People can not only study culture from the perspective of Chinese characters, but also dig out the overall cultural characteristics and specific cultural information contained in the origin, evolution and configuration of Chinese characters. We can also study Chinese characters from the perspective of culture and explore the influence of other cultural items on the development law of Chinese characters themselves. Since ancient times, Chinese characters have always stubbornly adhered to their unique ideographic nature and never cut off their connection with culture, which makes the study of Chinese character culture applicable to all historical stages. Therefore, the study of Chinese character culture is not only reasonable in theory, but also feasible in practice.

Second, the difference between "Chinese character culture" and "China culture"

In the field of Chinese character culture research, some people often confuse the two basic concepts of "Chinese character culture" and "China culture" and study the cultural connotation expressed in Chinese as a Chinese character culture phenomenon, thus affecting the scientific nature of Chinese character culture research.

In fact, "Chinese character culture" and "Chinese culture" are two different concepts with different connotations. Although Chinese characters and Chinese are both carriers of culture, there are essential differences between them. As far as its constituent elements are concerned, language has only two elements: sound and meaning, while writing has three elements: tangible, sound and meaning. The phonetic and semantic elements of Chinese characters are inherited from Chinese, while the physical elements are unique to Chinese. Although glyphs are related to sound and meaning, they have their own independent functions and values, and have their own structural rules and systems. This determines that Chinese characters are not only closely related to Chinese, but also fundamentally different from Chinese. The relationship between Chinese characters and culture, on the one hand, takes Chinese as the intermediary, that is, it becomes the carrier of culture by recording Chinese; On the other hand, due to the particularity of Chinese characters, Chinese characters have cultural functions that Chinese does not have. Chinese characters are ideographic characters, especially early Chinese characters, and their forms are closely related to recorded things. People can spy out the cultural information related to the things they remember from the glyphs. Some of these cultural information can be reflected by the meaning of words, while others cannot be reflected by the meaning of words. Subjectively speaking, the main purpose of Chinese character configuration is to record Chinese characters, and its ideographic characteristics are a means and way to establish the relationship between glyphs and meanings. In other words, the main purpose of human ideographic word formation is to know words according to their glyphs, not things according to their glyphs. However, from the objective results, the ideographic configuration of Chinese characters not only records the characters, but also records other information besides the characters. For example, the word "Wang" in Oracle Bone Inscriptions not only records the word "Wang", but also tells people with its shape like an axe that ancient rulers ruled the world by force. Due to the lack of ancient literature, we can't get this information from the meaning of "Wang" itself. At the beginning of word-making, the ancients didn't consciously save this information in the glyph, but because the rulers at that time had to have weapons, people saw that weapons were easily associated with people with weapons, so they used the shape of weapons as the glyph to record the word "Wang" in order to establish a clear connection between the glyph and the meaning. Later, the image of the ruler changed and the meaning of "king" changed. People can't understand the characteristics of ancient rulers through the meaning of "king" itself. The shape of "king" has become a historical witness of the image of ancient rulers and has very important cultural and archaeological value. It can be seen that the cultural function of Chinese characters actually comes from two aspects: one is from the characters in Chinese, and the other is from the form of Chinese characters. The former is the materialization of China cultural function in Chinese characters, which coincides with China culture, so it still belongs to the category of China culture. The latter is unique to Chinese characters, so it is a real Chinese character culture.

In specific research, many people label China culture as Chinese character culture, and attribute many lexical phenomena to Chinese characters. For example, in an article entitled "Research on Chinese Character Culture", some people used the words "cow" and "horse" in Shuowen to prove that China had experienced the animal husbandry era in ancient times. Not to mention the practical value of this proof, only in theory, there is a tendency to confuse Chinese character culture with China culture. There are many words in the two parts of "cow" and "horse", which can only reflect that there were many words related to cows and horses in the language at that time. Moreover, the glyphs of Chinese characters themselves cannot provide more cultural information. Therefore, the study of the cultural phenomena reflected by the words "Niu" and "Ma" can only be regarded as a lexical cultural problem, but not as a Chinese character cultural problem. If everything that belongs to the meaning of words is attributed to Chinese characters, the cultural functions of Chinese characters are indeed all-encompassing. If so, any word records its meaning, so it must also record its culture. So, what's the difference between Chinese characters and other characters? When we study the cultural function of Chinese characters, we must start with the special configuration of Chinese characters. Only in this way can we discover the essential characteristics of Chinese character culture.

Third, the measurement of cultural functions of Chinese characters.

It is a serious problem to grasp the cultural function of Chinese characters inaccurately, or even exaggerate the cultural function of Chinese characters at will. Influenced by the superiority theory of Chinese characters, many scholars praised Chinese characters as fantastic, saying that "Chinese characters are a series of strange passwords", "they are living fossils of ancient society" and "every Chinese character has become a mirror image of a certain culture". These statements are obviously inconsistent with the measured cultural functions of Chinese characters.

Although there is a mutual proof relationship between Chinese characters and culture, this mutual proof relationship is not completely equal. Generally speaking, the role of Chinese characters as proof of culture is greater than that of Chinese characters as proof of culture, because Chinese characters are, after all, symbols of recording language and products of historical accumulation. Although there is a close relationship between Chinese characters and culture, it does not have the function of describing culture in detail, nor does it have the function of finally confirming culture, let alone the function of confirming the era to which culture belongs. This requires us to have a clear understanding of the limitation of Chinese characters' cultural functions, accurately grasp the measurement of Chinese characters' cultural functions, and not exaggerate them at will. In this respect, Wang Ning and others' Shuo Wen Jie Zi and China Ancient Culture can be described as a successful model. In the preface of the book, it is clearly written: "The cultural information stored in Chinese characters can only be obtained from the configuration of each word-a small square inch, simplified lines and strokes, and the relationship between words, so it is limited. If we exaggerate and start from our own subjective speculation, we will do many mysterious and extensive new things, which are actually difficult to convince. [3](P2)

The original purpose of Chinese character creation is to record language, not to describe culture in detail. Other cultural information besides meaning embodied by Chinese character glyphs is only a by-product of Chinese character creation. If this by-product is promoted to its main function, it will lead to misunderstanding of the essence of Chinese characters. Influenced by the concept of exaggerating the cultural function of Chinese characters, some scholars cannot correctly locate Chinese characters and treat the relationship between Chinese characters and culture correctly. They don't regard Chinese characters as a tool to record Chinese, but as a panacea for textual research and cultural confirmation, trying to construct the whole ancient cultural history of China through the configuration of Chinese characters. Therefore, they wantonly exaggerate the cultural functions of Chinese characters and link the original Chinese character configuration with cultural phenomena far-fetched. For example, some people say, "Its existence is undoubtedly a living fossil, which enables us to step into the dynamic cultural consciousness of the ancients through the static form of words and reveal the profound political, economic, religious and artistic concepts contained in the words, as well as the behavior, values and ways of understanding things of the ancients. As a symbol of China traditional culture, Chinese characters are the backbone of China culture. " [4](P 15) The author compares Chinese characters to "living fossils" and "backbones" of Chinese culture, saying that they are "symbols" of Chinese culture. It seems that all aspects of Chinese culture can be found in the modeling of Chinese characters, which is undoubtedly an exaggeration of the cultural functions of Chinese characters. We believe that there is indeed a lot of cultural information about ancient society in the configuration of Chinese characters, but Chinese characters do not have the function of describing culture in detail, and their reflection on culture is limited and incomplete. Therefore, it is impossible to confirm culture only by the configuration of Chinese characters, let alone build an ancient cultural system.

Chinese character configuration system is the product of historical accumulation, which is gradually formed with the development of human society, which determines that it must have a strong historical level. When Chinese characters are accumulated into a complete configuration system, this historical level has been deeply hidden behind the whole configuration system, which is difficult or even impossible to examine, so it is impossible to use Chinese characters to confirm the era to which culture belongs. It is difficult to draw a clear conclusion about which historical level some cultural phenomena contained in Chinese character configuration should belong to. This requires us to be cautious when studying culture with Chinese characters, to exclude subjectivity as much as possible, and to establish an objective and true connection between the configuration of Chinese characters and cultural phenomena. Some people don't understand this, but regardless of the level of the times, they generally study the cultural functions of Chinese characters, and the result can only be a wrong conclusion. For example, according to the fact that women produce more words, some people think that "the inequality between men and women can be fully proved from the shape of Chinese characters". There are 258 words in the female department of Shuowen, which shows that the social status of early women is relatively high. " [5]; Others think that "a large number of derogatory terms of women's department reflect the low status of women in ancient society and are discriminated against and insulted" [6]; Why is there such a different conclusion? The crux of the problem lies in the complexity of the words "storytelling women's department", which can never be produced at the same time, so it is impossible to reflect the social concept of a certain era. It is impossible to investigate which Chinese characters originated from matriarchal society and which Chinese characters originated from paternal society. Therefore, it can neither prove the high social status of "earlier" women nor prove the low social status of "ancient" women. The article "Looking at the Evolution of Ancient Women's Status from Women's Sides" [7] attempts to describe the evolution history of ancient women's status through female parts. The author thinks that from Shang Dynasty to Western Zhou Dynasty, the status of ancient women in China was extremely high in matriarchal clan commune, and this evolution process can be found in the configuration of Chinese characters. The author seems to have answers, which word comes from which era and reflects the cultural phenomenon of which era, but in fact he used Oracle Bone Inscriptions of Shang Dynasty to prove the high status of women in matriarchal clan commune; In proving that Shang Dynasty was a transitional period of women's status, Oracle Bone Inscriptions was still used. Even when proving the low status of women in the Western Zhou Dynasty, they are still using the examples that have been produced in Oracle Bone Inscriptions. So, which Oracle Bone Inscriptions reflects the phenomenon of matriarchal clan commune, which Oracle Bone Inscriptions reflects the phenomenon of Shang Dynasty and which Oracle Bone Inscriptions reflects the phenomenon of Western Zhou Dynasty in advance? I'm afraid the lack of this historical view is debatable.

Chinese characters are a symbol system, and the existence of each Chinese character is restricted by the system. It is not only related to other roles in some aspects, but also different from other roles in different configurations. Connection and difference are two necessary conditions for the existence of each Chinese character, and they are also the essential connotation of Chinese character symbols. The systematic characteristics of Chinese character symbols require that we must proceed from the systematic principle when analyzing the configuration of Chinese characters, and cannot analyze individual Chinese characters in isolation. Influenced by the concept of exaggerating the cultural function of Chinese characters, some scholars always look at the glyphs of Chinese characters with colored glasses and are used to seeking confirmation for some cultural phenomenon in glyphs. For example, some people think that the two indicators in Oracle Bone Inscriptions's "mother" symbolize "breasts are very developed", and on this basis, they argue that there is female reproductive worship in primitive society. [8] We think this argument is far-fetched. At first, Chinese characters were created by pictographic method, which was to highlight the distinctive features of things. Only in this way can we distinguish similar things. For example, the configuration of the words "cow" and "sheep" highlights the characteristics that the angle and the angle bend upward and downward, thus making the shapes of characters have obvious differences. The word "mother" stands out from other words because it is different from other words, because it is difficult to distinguish the mother represented by the word "woman" from the woman represented by the word "woman" in appearance, and other characteristics are difficult to be reflected in the font except that the mother's breasts are more developed than the average woman. Therefore, the ancients added two points representing breasts to the word "female" as the "mother", which not only kept the connection with the word "female", but also reflected the difference with the word "female". Obviously, it is to meet the needs of the systematic characteristics of Chinese characters, not to express any reproductive worship. It can be seen that Chinese characters are a strict systematic symbol system, and each Chinese character does not exist in isolation, but is restricted by the whole system. Therefore, we can't say words at will for temporary convenience, otherwise it will lead to serious consequences and bring confusion to readers.

In a word, "Chinese character culture must be based on science, and it cannot violate the development law of Chinese characters or the development law of culture. Chinese character culturology is a science, not a fantasy, nor is it a personal unfounded association and speculation. " [9] Chinese character configuration does contain rich cultural connotations and has great reference value in cultural research. However, when we study Chinese character culture, we must be guided by scientific theory, operate carefully, establish a correct view of Chinese character culture, accurately grasp the measurement of Chinese character cultural function, and rationally analyze the configuration of Chinese characters; It is necessary to clarify the purpose of Chinese character culture research, the problems to be solved and what problems can be solved in Chinese character culture research, correctly understand the applicable objects of Chinese character culture methods, and avoid arbitrary abuse out of fashion psychology. Only in this way can the cultural function of Chinese characters be correctly reflected. However, it is not easy to do this. It requires both a solid knowledge of Chinese characters and a high cultural literacy, both of which are indispensable.

I hope it helps you.