Originality and passion, rely on your human traits to outperform AI

The first Chinese Writing Contest was launched in 2021. It was started as a response to an ongoing prevalent belief among Chinese language learners, teachers and test authorities, who have championed the idea that students must learn one or two thousand of Chinese characters, just to get started with their reading and writing Chinese. Some books are sold as foundation materials, offering only 800-1000 individual characters.

This is misleading.

At the time, I did not anticipate the rise of ChatGPT in 2022. All I wanted to show is that, as a starter, students don’t have to learn one or two thousand of characters to be able to read and write some Chinese stories. Also, reading and writing Chinese stories can be such a joy that is available for all students.

Today, AI powered chat bots, such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek, have given a new meaning and mission to this Chinese Writing Contest. When AI can churn out beautiful essays and stories in Chinese within a few seconds, we must become more human in order not to lose our edge.

With that being said, I’m glad to announce that Chinese Writing Contest is turning five this year. And the realm of creativity continues to be boundless.

For a very long time, it has been taken for granted that there is a positive causality between the number of Chinese characters a student has learned and the Chinese reading and writing skills this student has achieved. 

It is as if learning more Chinese characters automatically improves students’ reading and writing skills. 

Hence the question that is often asked among students is “How many characters have you learned?” What it’s really saying is that, in a very subtle way, if you have not leaned at least 1000 Chinese characters, you are nothing.

This belief is re-enforced by HSK exams and other tests, which are commonly divided based on the number of Chinese characters taught. Lower level students learn fewer characters than higher level students. Correspondingly, lower level students are not expected to be any good.

Take HSK level 2 for example. 300 Chinese characters are prescribed for this level. Instead of asking students to write a story using these characters, exam questions are mostly about words and sentences, and pinyin is included. In other words, the test authorities does not have high expectations for lower level students. Fragmented knowledge is all that is asked for.

It’s a shame. The power of 300 Chinese characters is greatly underestimated. They can form coherent and interesting texts, which can be used as a foundation for solid reading and writing skills. Understanding the capacity of Chinese characters can make even beginners’ Chinese impressive. 

In order to show this side of Chinese characters, I launched this Chinese Writing Contest that only 320 Chinese characters are allowed to use.

Today, the future has arrived. With the advent of AI, there is an existential crisis for both teachers and students. Everyone is asking: Am I going to be replaced by AI? How can I outperform AI?

The answer is: there are still areas where AI can not function and where we can outperform AI.

AI learns through Large Language Models. Its super power comes from countless texts on the internet and else where.

It is in this sense that this Chinese Writing Contest offers one arena for humans to outperform AI.

This Chinese Writing Contest is created based on a small language model. There are no vast amount of available texts. There are no fixed formulas. There are no designated topics. And there will never be.

What this challenge needs is originality and passion, which are human traits.

This is where we distinguish ourselves from AI. We’re humans. 

We excel in areas that machines can not. Our mind has dimensions that go beyond the machine’s logical and mathematical calculations.

As the organiser of this tiny Chinese Writing Contest, I hope it can be one of the many tools that will help humans to better understand ourselves.