I remember I read from a magazine that those Chinese characters introduced to Japan were not just from one time (一次性传入), they came to Japan from different dynasty and different place with dialect, and that’s why in Japanese one Kanji have three pronunciations most of the time : 吴音、汉音 and 唐音.

As for some Kanji in Japanese have different meanings from their Chinese counterparts…yeah, they’re just like two leaves, one is green, one is yellow, even they different from surface, they have same root… so it seems not hard for Chinese to guess those Kanji’s meaning in probably… Like “出世”means 出人头地、“差别”means歧视、“大根” means “萝卜”、“讲义”means上课、“手纸”means信、“丈夫”means坚固...I just contacted Japanese from comic books…so…shallow idea to share.  

Btw, one of my JF told me that a Japanese’ literacy is proportional to his Kanji level…

 

Chinese culture is converging...I think that is true...but the culture converging is not only happen in China,but also spread all over the word, just like a lot of people speak english and wear T-shirt and jean, no matter where he/she comes from. Globalization makes the whole word becoming more and more similar. Well...if you know about the chinese history, it's not hard to find that from thousands of years, the king of each dynasty they do a lot of work to make the culture converge, and it's turned out very benefit for dominion over such a vast area.Like the first Emperpor of Qin (259-210B.C), he unified the characters,so even we can't understand each other's dialect sometimes, we can still appreciate one another's literatures and so on. Also that's a very important reason for why in four countries with an ancient civilization, China is the only one who's culture never breake up. As for the mandarin...that's really makes our life more convenient,but it's also harmful for the local culture if we never study the dialect...I feel lucky I never lose this 'special language', I talk my family with dialect, but when I go to school I talk with my teachers and classmates with Mandarin. I think most of Chinese have this habit since he/she was a child. and also I don't think it's a hard thing to speak perfect Mandarin if you practice and imitate a lot. :) Hmm...you know, an increasing number of people realized it's very important to protect the local culture and to keep the culture diversity. I think China do a lot of work for this...at least in music field, I know the national folk music is becoming an focus in recent years. Many musicians going to the mountain villiage to record these folk songs which just pass by mouth and singing with dialect,that's pretty meaningful . :)

Yeah!! this book is written by Carl Dalhaus!! And you know him??!! Haha..well..my professor recommend this book is because of my graduation thesis...I still can't read the entire...but thank you anyway :D