The early Chinese phonetic system developed in the 1910s was designed to represent the sounds of spoken Chinese independently from the meanings carried by written characters. This separation between sound and meaning became the conceptual starting point for my own linguistic system: a set of 409 characters through which names can be pronounced, but not immediately understood.
I am still uncertain whether design can ever be an adequate form of remembrance. I do not have the confidence—or the right—to speak on behalf of those who lost their families, their homes, or their own lives to this tragedy.
Today, these names survive in memorials and historical records, often appearing one after another like symbols inscribed on a wall. We may be able to read them, yet reading a name is not the same as knowing the life it once held. Behind each name was a person embedded in relationships, carrying private memories, attachments, expectations, and hopes. Much of that meaning has become inaccessible to us.
Perhaps the difficulties to understand these names is precisely the point. They ask us to confront not only what history has preserved, but also everything that a name alone can no longer tell us.