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At the recent powwow of the nation's top advisory body, some cultural elites proposed to add the teaching of fanti characters to the curriculum of elementary schools. In a related case, a Hong Kong representative said the Special Administrative Region should promote the use of jian-ti characters. "Fanti" and "jianti" are Chinese for "traditional characters" and "simplified characters", respectively. The former is used in Hong Kong, Taiwan and some overseas Chinese communities, while the latter is a simplified version of the former introduced on the Chinese mainland, after New China was founded. The dueling for supremacy between the two writing systems often sparks controversy. Which one is better? Should one system accommodate the other? If you resist the temptation to politicize the debate, the answer is by no means elusive or complicated: Jianti is easier to learn because many characters have simpler forms; fanti looks better if you practice calligraphy or traditional painting. Sadly, there are people who cannot help treating it as a manifestation of political clout - a kind of mainland versus overseas wrestling for soft power. The thinking goes along the lines that if you support the mainland, you should automatically prefer jianti, and vice versa. Then, there are those who approach the issue from a practical standpoint. Detractors of jianti argue that the need to simplify the strokes no longer exists as handwriting is fast giving way to typing on a computer, which requires only recognition of a sound-based input. Opponents of fanti, on the other hand, contend that you don't have to know fanti to read all the classics, as they are often available in jianti format. | 
