ZHENG

LING

​In Chinese, 灵 (líng) conveys the meaning of "spirit or soul."

According to Zheng's mother, Sherry Cao, and her sister, Dan Cao, "Ling represents Zheng’s spirit, her passion for music, her Spirit towards life and death, her cleverness in many ways." 

灵 is the simplified form of the word. 

靈 is the traditional form of the word.

​Traditional Chinese characters are one of the two commonly used forms of Chinese characters. They are a written form of the Chinese language that first came about during the Han Dynasty (shortly after the Qin Dynasty) in 206 BC. The name "traditional" is used to set them apart from simplified Chinese characters. These older, "traditional" forms of Chinese characters would remain more or less the same, although there were a few changes now and then, until the People's Republic of China (PRC) was formed in 1949.

At that time, the Communist Party of China (CPC) started to create simplified Chinese characters, in which anywhere between 20-30% of all the Chinese characters used in daily life were replaced by ones with fewer strokes and easier to write in order to make education more available to common people, especially farmers.