He vs. She

Did you know it's only recently that there is a difference between "he" and "she" in written form in Mandarin?
"He" and "she" are both pronounced as "ta" in the first tone so the listener has to focus on the context in order to discern if the subject (or object) is female or male. Reading is now the only way to easily spot the difference.
This changed in this century when officials of the Republic of China were creating Simplified Characters (basically easier to write variations of what is now called Traditional Characters). "He" and "she" used to both be written 他. However, now "he" is written as 他  and "she" is written as 她, which seems more appropriate to me since the radical (the character on the left-hand side) "nu" symbolizes "female" in Chinese.
I learned this all from the book I read earlier called "Dreaming in Chinese."