Did the Chinese Literati view characters as impractical?

did the Chinese literati themselves ever step back, in antiquity, and realize that their script was “hieratic,” rigid, or impractical? Or was that kind of reflection simply impossible in their intellectual world? 1. Oracle bones and “primitiveness” The oracle bone inscriptions (ca. 1200 BCE) were indeed tied to divination and royal ritual. Writing there was not a neutral tool, but a sacred technology. The script was complex, specialized, and never meant for mass literacy. At that stage, functionality in your sense wasn’t the point — it served kingship, ritual, and communication with ancestors. So in those days, the idea that writing was “impractical” wouldn’t even arise, because writing was not conceived as a mass utility. 2. Early reflections on writing (Zhou–Han period) When did literate elites first reflect on the nature of characters? Confucius (5th c. BCE): In the Analects, he never critiques characters as impractical; instead, he emphasizes transmitting ancient texts accurately. Writing was seen as the vessel of civilization. Xunzi (3rd c. BCE): He mentions writing as a “tool” for ordering knowledge, but again in a reverent, functional sense. Shuowen Jiezi (ca. 100 CE, Xu Shen): This is the first dictionary and systematic analysis of characters. Xu Shen treats them almost like a cosmology — characters embody the Way of Heaven and Earth. For him, their hieratic quality was a strength, not a weakness. So by the Han dynasty, learned elites clearly regarded characters as beyond mundane utility: quasi-sacred, linked to cosmic order. 3. The absence of radical critique in antiquity You asked: were there “visionaries like Laozi” who saw impracticality? Laozi (6th–4th c. BCE, if historical): In the Daodejing, he criticizes “words” as limited (“Great Dao cannot be spoken”), but not writing per se. His skepticism is metaphysical, not functional. Zhuangzi (4th–3rd c. BCE): Also skeptical of language, saying words obscure the Dao. But again, this is a philosophical critique of all symbolic systems, not a practical critique of characters. No record survives of anyone in early China saying “these characters are too rigid, too hard, or unsuited for a changing world.” Why? Likely because in the premodern imagination, writing was revered as civilizational essence, not subject to utilitarian measurement. Questioning it as impractical would have been nearly unintelligible. 4. When criticism finally appears The first radical critiques come much later, around the late 19th to early 20th century, under the pressure of: Western alphabetic scripts, Japan’s partial simplification and kana system, The crisis of modernization. It’s only then that Chinese intellectuals (Qian Xuantong, Lu Xun, Chen Duxiu) frame characters as a liability rather than a sacred heritage. This was a revolutionary shift: it required an entirely new cultural framework in which “utility” outweighed “tradition.” ✅ So to answer directly: In antiquity, no — there is no evidence of anyone calling writing rigid, impractical, or primitive. Instead, they exalted its hieratic quality. That kind of critique only became possible in the 20th century, when the metric of “usefulness” came to dominate over “sacred tradition.”