Today, Guagua Room gives you an English essay, introducing the history of Chinese calligraphy in brief.Generally speaking, there are five calligraphy types in history, named Seal script, Clerical script, Cursive script, Running script and Regular script. These different types emerged in different ages. Let’s take a browse.
Oracle-Bone Inscriptions甲骨文Up to now, this is the oldest Chinese characters, emerging in Shang Dynasty, more than 3 thousand years ago. These characters, which were used for recording the divination results, were inscribed on animal’s bones, tortoise’s shells. Today, most Chinese people cannot recognize these characters, only a few experts can understand the meaning of them. Anyhow, they are absolutely mature Chinese characters.
Qiang Pan, Seal script牆盤，篆書This work called Qiang Pan, created by our ancestors in Western Zhou Dynasty, about nearly 3 thousand years ago. Unlike the oracle-bone inscriptions that were inscribed by knife, the characters in the Qiang Pan were casted at the same time when the vessel was made. The casting process was very complex. The strokes of the inscriptions were blunt, round and strong, not so sharp.
Yi Shan Stone Tablet, Seal script嶧山刻石，篆書The first emperor in Chinese history called Qin Shi Huang, who achieved great projects. such as Great Wall, Expressway of First Empire, the Terracotta Warriors and so on. One of his achievements was standardizing the Chinese characters. Now the inscriptions we see in the picture is the standard form of characters in the Qin Dynasty. They also belong to Seal script, but the style is different from Bronze inscriptions. For most Chinese people nowadays, these characters are still some “God knows what they are”.
Wu Wei Bamboo Slip, Clerical script武威漢簡，隸書Before the paper invented, books were made of bamboo or wood. Ancient Chinese had used bamboo slips to write characters. The bamboo slips were slim, about one to two centimeters wide, so the characters were very small. This script called Clerical script, is much easier to recognize than Seal script for people nowadays. It is said that this script was written by local official, about 2 thousand years ago.
Cao Quan Stone Tablet, Clerical script曹全碑，隸書Many calligraphers thought this work is the most beautiful clerical script works in history. It was made at the Eastern Han Dynasty. Interestingly, people don’t know the author of this work, for there was no signature on the tablet. The man called Cao Quan was dead, his descendants made a tombstone for him, inscribing an essay to memorize their father. The characters were inscribed by some stonemason, who was definitely an illiteracy belonging to the bottom of the society, therefore, it’s normally that the stonemason’s name was disappeared. On the other hand, the host’s name, Cao Quan, is spread through the ages. The End
