Open your smartphone’s default Chinese-language input system and start typing. Odds are the text will display in simple, clear, somewhat blocky typeface. This is Heiti, a relatively young category of typefaces — but already the default on digital devices around the world.

The tale of how that came to pass is not your typical “China story.” It involved designers, scientists, and bureaucrats from China to Japan, even Massachusetts, collaborating and competing for over a century. The result of their work is something once thought impossible: bringing Hanzi into the digital world.