China's regional language differences mainly concern pronunciation. They are far less noticeable in text that is written in ideographs. In the early twentieth century, language reformers led by Hu Shih developed a writing system called ''báihuà''. This system is based on language usage in the vernacular novel ''Dream of the Red Chamber'' (1791). The novel is written in the Beijing dialect. In the 1920s, ''báihuà'' displaced Classical Chinese as the China's standard writing system. | China's regional language differences mainly concern pronunciation. They are far less noticeable in text that is written in ideographs. In the early twentieth century, language reformers led by Hu Shih developed a writing system called ''báihuà''. This system is based on language usage in the vernacular novel ''Dream of the Red Chamber'' (1791). The novel is written in the Beijing dialect. In the 1920s, ''báihuà'' displaced Classical Chinese as the China's standard writing system. |