Crafting Hanzi as Narrative Bridges: An AI Co-Creation Workshop for Elderly Migrants
Journal:
arXiv
Published Date:
Jul 2, 2025
Abstract
This paper explores how older adults, particularly aging migrants in urban
China, can engage AI-assisted co-creation to express personal narratives that
are often fragmented, underrepresented, or difficult to verbalize. Through a
pilot workshop combining oral storytelling and the symbolic reconstruction of
Hanzi, participants shared memories of migration and recreated new character
forms using Xiaozhuan glyphs, suggested by the Large Language Model (LLM),
together with physical materials. Supported by human facilitation and a soft AI
presence, participants transformed lived experience into visual and tactile
expressions without requiring digital literacy. This approach offers new
perspectives on human-AI collaboration and aging by repositioning AI not as a
content producer but as a supportive mechanism, and by supporting narrative
agency within sociotechnical systems.
