Chinese civilization is a unique civilization, and its writing is also very unique. Among all the countries in the world, only China has an uninterrupted cultural inheritance due to the strong tolerance and assimilation of its national culture. This makes Chinese characters one of the few uninterrupted writing forms in the world. The oracle bone inscriptions that appeared in the late Yin and Shang Dynasties around 14th century BC are widely considered to be the first form of Chinese characters. They have developed to this day. Various fonts such as variety style, monolithic style, floating cloud style, and variant styles have been born. This is a symbol of Chinese culture. The concrete manifestation of prosperity is also the inevitable result of the development of Chinese characters.
Before the Shang Dynasty
China has said that "calligraphy and painting have the same origin" since ancient times. This is because the earliest source of writing is pictures. Calligraphy and painting are like brothers, born from the same root, and they have the same origin. Lots of inner connections. The origin of Chinese characters is primitive pictures, the "picture" form that primitive people used to express themselves in life. Slowly it changed from the original picture into an "ideographic symbol".
Jiahu carved symbols
A batch of carved symbols were unearthed at the Jiahu site in Wuyang, Henan Province (9,000-7,800 years ago) more than 8,000 years ago, known as Jiahu carved symbols. . Some scholars think they are just engraved symbols, while others think they are words. Jao Tsung-i of the Chinese University of Hong Kong once conducted an in-depth study and research on the Jiahu inscriptions and proposed that "the Jiahu inscriptions provide brand-new information on the key issues of the origin of Chinese characters." Ge Yinghui, a paleographist from the Department of History at Peking University, also believes that “these symbols should be a kind of writing.”
Since the article "The earliest writing Sign use in the seventh millennium BC at Jiahu, Henan Province, China" co-written by Zhang Juzhong and Professor Li Xueqin was published in the British Antiquity magazine, it has attracted the attention of some domestic and foreign media. Attention, interested foreign scholars also discussed it on the "Science" website. Analysis of Cai Yunzhang and Zhang Juzhong's "The Brilliant Dawn of Chinese Civilization - On the Hexagram Characters Discovered in Jiahu, Wuyang" [1]: Among the 21 engraved characters in Jiahu, 11 characters have been recognized, which respectively reflect Li Li and Kun of Yi Xue. The Chinese characters for the hexagram image of the two hexagrams.
Shuangdun Carved Symbols
More than 630 carved symbols were found at the Shuangdun site in Bengbu more than 7,000 years ago, which are rich and diverse. In terms of domestic and foreign cultural relics of the same period, they are very unique. Rare, amazing. The variety of symbols and rich content are unmatched by other sites of the same period. The functions of double-pier engraved symbols can be divided into three categories: expressing meaning, stamping, and counting. From October 24th to 25th, 2009, more than 30 well-known experts and scholars from home and abroad gathered in Bengbu to conduct a discussion on "The Inscription Symbols of the Bengbu Shuangdun Site and the Origin of Early Civilization". Many experts attending the meeting agreed that the Shuangdun engraved symbols reflected the lifestyle of the early Shuangdun ancestors, already possessed the nature of primitive writing, and were one of the sources of Chinese characters [3].
Banpo Pottery Symbols
Twenty or thirty kinds of engraved symbols are carved on the rim of the pottery bowl from the Banpo site of the Yangshao Culture 6,000 years ago, namely Banpo Tao Fu, Yu Shengwu believes, "are some simple characters produced in the origin stage of writing." Some of them are numbers.
Qingdun Carved Talisman
The Qingdun site in Jiangsu Province, belonging to the Liangzhu Culture in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, dates back 5,000 years ago and has numerically carved symbols.
Charms carved at Zhuangqiao Tomb
Charms carved at the Zhuangqiao Tomb site in Zhejiang Province, belonging to the Liangzhu culture in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, date back 5,000 years ago, and some of them are connected into sentences.
Bone inscriptions
Bone inscriptions refer to the symbols carved on animal bones - hieroglyphs or graphic characters, which are concentrated in Shandong (also found in Chifeng, Guanzhong and other places) , is the earliest legible writing in my country that mainly records events. In 2005, Professor Liu Fengjun, a famous archaeologist and director of the Institute of Art Archeology of Shandong University, discovered and named it "bone inscriptions" and determined that the carving tools were sharp-angled gems such as agate, which were formed between 2600 and 1300 BC. "Jian" was a popular character during the Longshan Culture period.
Since the end of 2010, researcher Ding Zaixian, a well-known scholar and full-time vice president of the Shandong Tourism Industry Association, has successfully and systematically deciphered the bone inscriptions, and comprehensively discussed the inheritance relationship with oracle bone inscriptions and modern Chinese characters from the origin and structure of the characters. .
Taosi Zhuwen
The Taosi ruins in Xiangfen County, Shanxi Province, have been dated and corrected by radiocarbon dating, and their age is approximately 2500 BC to 1900 BC. In 1984, archaeologists discovered a fragment of a flat pot in the Taosi ruins. The stubble around the fragment was painted red. There were two characters written in Zhu on the fragment. One of the characters was "文" and the other one was "Yao". There are many interpretations such as "Yi" and "Ming". Zhu Naicheng, a researcher at the Institute of Archeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and director of the Information Center, said that the Zhu script is 1,500 years older than the oracle bone inscriptions [4]. Archaeologist Mr. Su Bingqi once commented: "The Taosi culture not only reached the 'Fang Kingdom' era, which was a higher stage than the late Hongshan Culture society, but also established its central position among the various kingdoms at that time. It was equivalent to the "Fang Kingdom" in ancient history. The era of Yao and Shun, that is, the earliest "China" that appeared in the historical records of the Pre-Qin Dynasty, laid the foundation of China. "The southeastern Yicheng County near Xiangfen County is the Tang Dynasty of the descendants of the legendary Tao Tang clan.
Xia Dynasty Shuishi Script
The pottery unearthed from the Xia Ruins of Erlitou, Yanshi, Luoyang City, Henan Province has 24 Shuishi scripts[5].
A more eclectic opinion holds that Chinese characters "formed a relatively complete writing system" in the middle and late Xia Dynasty 4,000 years ago. Of course, this is not a generally accepted view, because there are still few texts unearthed from the Xia Dynasty.
The Yin and Shang Dynasties
It was around the 14th century BC, the late Yin and Shang Dynasties. "Ideographic symbols" evolved into the more stereotyped "oracle bones". This is considered the first form of "kanji". The characters carved on the bones of animals and the tortoise plates of turtles, and the characters found in the Yin Ruins, are considered to be the direct ancestors of "modern Chinese characters". This can prove the continuity of Chinese civilization. For thousands of years, the Middle East has No one can decipher the hieroglyphics of their ancestors. Only modern Chinese can understand some "oracle bone inscriptions" from the Yin and Shang Dynasties. The characters on these turtle boards were first used to predict good and bad luck. Ancient people believed that questions about diseases, dreams, hunting, weather, etc. were carved on the turtle boards, and then burned with fire to burn the turtle boards and animal bones. , the cracks produced by it, fortune tellers can judge the good or bad fortune of the things predicted based on the shape and direction of these cracks. This is the ancestor of modern Chinese characters called "Oracle Bone Inscriptions". There are more than 5,000 kinds of "oracle bone inscriptions" discovered so far. And there are more than a thousand that can be interpreted.
Western Zhou Dynasty
Due to the extensive use of bronze vessels, the words engraved on bronze bells, tripods and stone drums are called "Bronze Inscriptions". It is also known as Zhongdingwen and Shiguwen. According to legend, it was created by Taishi during the reign of King Xuan of Zhou Dynasty. So far, there are ten stone drums from the Zhou Dynasty in the Palace Museum, with ten four-character poems engraved on them. Because of the feudal separatist rule, they were divided into different parts and their writings were not the same. Until the Qin Dynasty. Qin Shihuang unified China. Only then can the words be unified.
During the Qin Dynasty
Qin Shihuang unified writing and measurement. The person whose achievements were remarkable was Li Si, the prime minister at that time. After Li Si collected and sorted out the writing at that time and then deleted the complex and simplified it and beautified it, this unified writing was called "Xiao Zhuan", also known as "Qin Zhuan". The writing at this time has almost no trace of hieroglyphics.
The "Xiaozhuan" writing during the Qin Dynasty was too standardized and the writing speed was very slow, so many simple fonts appeared among the people. The characteristic of this font is that the circle of "Xiaozhuan" is changed into a square. The curvature of "Xiaozhuan" was changed to straight, and some radicals were separated, which was called "Qin Li".
During the Han Dynasty
Clerical script was very popular. "" did not completely get rid of the structural characteristics of "Xiaozhuan", which was basically square, while "Han Li" fully utilized the advantages of the brush The characteristic is that the twists and turns of the "silkworm head and wild goose tail" appear, making it easy to write. This kind of official script was popular during the Western Han Dynasty. It's called "Han Li".
While "Han Li" was popular in the Han Dynasty, "regular script" was in its infancy.
It was already very popular in the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. Wang Xizhi and Wang Xianzhi of the Jin Dynasty were the real founders of regular script. They absorbed the rounded strokes of seal script and retained the squareness and straightness of official script, removing the "silkworm head and swallow tail", making the script more popular. The structure of Chinese characters has been generally fixed. At that time, it was called "real script". Later generations used this font as a model for learning calligraphy, so they renamed it "regular script".
During the Tang Dynasty
"Regular script" was particularly popular. Calligraphers such as Yan Zhenqing, Liu Gongquan, and Ouyang Xun were all outstanding at that time. Their calligraphy works are still studied as examples today. .
The origin of "cursive script", like running script or other calligraphy styles, cannot be determined when it began. "Historical Records" says: "During the Warring States Period, King Huai of Chu asked Qu Yuan to write a constitutional decree. The draft was not yet submitted. Shangguan saw it and wanted to seize it, so the ancestor of cursive script originated in." Accordingly, the origin of cursive script is in From the words of the draft, it can be seen that the formation of cursive script was already in place during the Warring States Period. Because the font originated from a draft, in order to perform the function of sketching, it is relatively omitted and hasty. Naturally, it cannot be neat and written in haste. As the name suggests, it is cursive script. However, this kind of cursive script can only be said to be a draft of ancient seal script (the font used at that time). The discovery of real cursive script began in the early Han Dynasty. Its evolution process should be that there was "Zhangcao" first, and then "Jincao". "Grass", and then there are "Kuaicao" and other grass styles. Due to the neatness of regular script, the need for fast writing, and the calligrapher's desire to express his or her own thoughts and place his or her affection on the creation of the pen, a font that flows smoothly, is completed in one go, and is extremely rhythmic and artistically appealing - "cursive script".
Between regular script and cursive script is "running script". Running script is not as formal and serious as regular script, nor is it as unrestrained and difficult to identify as cursive script. Instead, it is elegant and cheerful, and the handwriting is flexible and thorough. It is also the most popular and commonly used font.
Song Dynasty
One of the four great inventions of China, woodblock printing was improved by Bi Sheng into movable type printing, and "Song type" was also produced. It was first produced in the Northern Song Dynasty and evolved from regular script. There are fat bodies and thin bodies, but regardless of whether they are fat or thin, they are thin horizontally, thick vertically, and square. It looks simple and dignified.
"Imitation Song Ti" is also a font that imitates "Song Ti". This font has only been around for seventy or eighty years, but it has developed very rapidly. It is a standard font that people like to use the most, and it has been widely used in printed matter and various occasions.
At the same time, "black body" was also born. This kind of font is eye-catching and generous, the handwriting is all the same thickness, the structure is eye-catching and tight, the strokes are thick and powerful, and the strokes such as strokes are not sharp, making it easy to read. Due to its eye-catching characteristics, it is often used in titles, blurbs, logos, etc. It enriches the expression forms of Chinese characters.
During the New China Period
Variety shows, monoliths, floating clouds, variations, etc. appeared. This is a concrete manifestation of the cultural prosperity of the motherland and an inevitable result of the development of Chinese characters. Chinese characters, also known as Chinese characters, Chinese characters, and Chinese characters, are a type of writing widely used in the Chinese character cultural circle. They are morphological and syllabic writings that are ideographic writings. They were invented, created and improved by the Han ancestors in ancient times. The exact history can be traced back to Oracle bone inscriptions from the Shang Dynasty around 1300 BC. Then to the small seal script of the Qin Dynasty, it was not named "Chinese characters" until the Han Dynasty. In the Tang Dynasty, regular script became the standard for handwriting used today - regular script. Chinese characters are the longest-used major writing system so far, and they are also the only writing systems among the major writing systems in ancient times that have been passed down to this day. Some scholars believe that Chinese characters are one of the key elements that maintain the long-term unity of northern and southern China. Some scholars also list Chinese characters as It is China’s fifth greatest invention. Chinese characters have been the main official text in all dynasties of China.
Homophony of Chinese characters
Edit
In addition to the shape of Chinese characters, there is also a problem of pronunciation. At some point, the pronunciation of a word becomes the only means of expressing the meaning of a word. In addition, there are many homophones in Chinese, with the same pronunciation but different glyphs and meanings. Chinese homophony is the clever application of these Chinese characters with the same pronunciation but different glyphs and meanings, expressing intriguing meanings.
In the past, ordinary people were oppressed and bullied, and felt pain and confrontation, but they did not dare to speak out directly, so they often used the homophones of Chinese characters to write many ballads related to current affairs. For example, a popular ballad in the Song Dynasty:
Break the tube and spill the vegetables, which is a good world on earth.
Killed the dragon, cut the vegetables, and ate the lamb with lotus leaves.
The song uses homophonic techniques to curse the treacherous officials and thieves Dang Tongguan, Cai Jing, Gao Qiu, He Zhizhong and others at that time. The pronunciations of "tong" and "tong" are homophonic, "cai" and "cai" are homophonic, "lamb" and "gao" are homophonic, and "he" and "he" are homophonic. They are respectively used to beat, splash, kill, eat, etc. Express their irresistible emotions.
After repeated use of the homophones of Chinese characters, a rhetorical method is formed called homophones. It has been used continuously since the Midnight Song. For example: "I first wanted to know my husband's heart, and the two hearts were in the same place, and I couldn't understand why I couldn't be a match." This song describes the twists and turns of love. When you start to fall in love, you hope that the two hearts can become one and concentrate on each other. They fell in love, but the situation changed later, just like the well-arranged silk entering the broken loom, it became neither silk nor piece. The pronunciation of "Si" and "Si" are harmonious, and the pronunciation of "Si" is harmonious with "Si", and "PI" is harmonious with the matching "PI", which means they cannot be paired. Commonly used in love songs are "furong" as "husband's appearance", "lotus" as "pity" or "connection", "lotus root" as "even", "silk" as "thinking", and "pear" as "pity". "" means "living", "Qing" means "love", etc.
Homophony is not only reflected in folk songs, but also widely used in people's daily life and folk life.
For example, among the people, since happiness is regarded as good luck and happiness is regarded as the goal pursued by the family or the individual, the word "福" will be posted on the door during the Chinese New Year. Sometimes the word "福" is deliberately pasted upside down to give the impression of "luck has arrived". The words "to" and "inverted" here are homophonic. For another example, fish is the most popular theme in folk New Year pictures, usually a naked little fat doll holding a big fish in both hands, and there are lotus ponds, lotus flowers, etc. The word "fish" is used to represent "abundance" (abundance), and the word "lotus" is used to express "connection". The theme of this painting is "abundance year after year", which means: I hope that I can live in abundance every year. Abundance.
The Development of Chinese Characters
Editor
The National Social Science Foundation project "Outline of the Development History of Chinese Characters", which is led by Professor Liu Youxin from the Chinese Department of Southwest Normal University, finally The result is the monograph "Outline of the Development History of Chinese Characters" published by China Encyclopedia Press. This result puts forward some new viewpoints worthy of attention from the following aspects.
1. Three stages in the history of the development of Chinese characters
The first stage is the picture writing stage. All writing before the Shang Dynasty belongs to this stage. The second stage is the phonetic writing stage, which is based on ideographs and phonetic writing as the main body. From oracle bone inscriptions to the characters of the Qin Dynasty all belong to this stage. The third stage is the picophonetic stage with picophonetic characters as the main body and some phonographic characters and phonetic characters retained. This stage belongs to the Qin and Han Dynasties to modern Chinese characters.
2. About the advantages and disadvantages of Chinese characters
The advantages of Chinese characters. The greatest advantage of Chinese characters is that they transcend dialects. China is a country with a vast territory and complex dialects. In ancient times, it was impossible to standardize language. Even if Mandarin is promoted now, it cannot be completed in a short time. However, Chinese characters are a common tool for written language communication across the country. The language is different, but the words written with a pen instead of spoken words are exactly the same. If the characters are pinyinized, Cantonese, Hokkien, Shanghainese, Beijing, etc. will appear, hindering people's exchange of ideas. Another advantage of Chinese characters is that they are rational. Writing is a system of symbols, which can be divided into two categories: rational writing and irrational writing. The so-called irrational refers to purely phonetic characters, such as borrowed characters, syllabic characters, alphabetic characters, etc. This kind of characters is purely a symbol and has no direct connection with the thing to be expressed. The so-called rational words such as Chinese characters not only represent the pronunciation of words, but also represent symbols of the form and category of things. For example, the word "水" evolved from the hieroglyphic shape of water. It has two functions: form and sound.
Another example is the two characters "王" and "阳". "水" is used to express the category, and "王" and "sheep" are used to express the pronunciation. They are called pictophonetic characters, which are the main body of Chinese characters. This characteristic of both pictograph and phonetic is easy to identify and identify. memory.
The shortcomings of Chinese characters in phonetic notation. Among the phonographic characters of Chinese characters, a small part have been used as borrowed characters for a long time, which are the phonetic characters of Chinese characters. Since their number is not large and most of them are commonly used words, we don’t need to talk about them. Here, we only talk about the phonetic function of pictophonetic characters. Most of the phonetic symbols of pictophonetic characters are phonograms that can be used alone. They are used as phonetic symbols to represent sounds, which are not as accurate as the phonetic symbols of alphabets. Chinese characters have many shortcomings in their phonetic functions, mainly the following three points: a. The phonetic symbols of picophonetic characters cannot distinguish differences in tones. The same phonetic symbol often represents different tones. For example, the character "Hu" is a Yangping character. But the "fu" in "muddleheaded" is pronounced Yangping, and the "fu" in "muddleheaded" is pronounced in Chinese. b. The phonetic symbols of phonograms often lose or weaken their phonetic function due to language changes. For example, the fourth tone of "shang" is pronounced as "shang", but the third tone of "yun" and "lie" are pronounced as "tang" with "shang" as the sound symbol, and the third tone of "dang" is pronounced as "party". "徜" and "长" pronounce the second tone of "chang", and "开" pronounces the third tone of "chang". c. The stress phenomenon of multiple readings of a Chinese character. For example, the word "ginseng" is pronounced with the first sound of "can" in the word "participate" and "visit", and the first sound of "shen" is pronounced with the word "ginseng". The first sound of "cen" in Chinese pronunciation has three stresses.
3. Regarding the simplification of Chinese characters
Chinese characters evolved and developed from picture characters. If they are drawn like objects, there will be more strokes. From the perspective of the development history of Chinese characters, simple and sparse strokes have always been an obvious trend in the evolution of Chinese characters. In 1956, a Chinese character simplification plan was announced, and in 1964, the scope and number of simplified characters were expanded. This was the first large-scale reform of Chinese characters in more than two thousand years. After more than 40 years of practice, it has been proved that it has played a great role in popularizing education and writing. On the other hand, the simplified Chinese characters are not without merit. For example, the words "Deng", "Huan", "Nan", "Shu", "Xi", "Dui", etc. have the part "you", which replaces the phonetic symbols with different pronunciations such as "Deng". Some cursive scripts are regularized. The writing method is different from the structure of regular script, and some homophone substitutions should be considered. But once the norms of writing are determined, they cannot be changed overnight, nor can everyone do their own thing and let things flow. Chinese characters are the carrier of China’s excellent culture and an important aspect of Chinese culture. We should treat Chinese characters just like we treat traditional Chinese culture. First, we must inherit the tradition but not sever it. Second, we must reform according to the development rules of Chinese characters themselves to make them a better communication tool. Due to the improvement of China's international status and economic development, more and more people are learning Chinese characters. Among the teachers who teach Chinese in various countries, some are from Taiwan and some are from mainland China. When teaching Chinese characters, there will naturally be two sets of teaching methods: traditional and simplified. Whether the two sets of teachings are unified, or how to unify them, needs to be discussed and resolved by relevant people, experts and scholars from both sides of the Taiwan Strait and overseas gathered together.
4. Regarding Chinese characters not being able to follow the path of Pinyin writing
In 1958, the country announced the Chinese Pinyin plan. Its role is as a tool for promoting Mandarin Chinese, as well as for phonetic notation of Chinese characters. There is also the possibility of expanding the scope of application of the pinyin scheme. For example, when primary school students encounter a Chinese character that they cannot write, they can use pinyin to write the word. Difficult and rare words in books and periodicals can be added with pinyin. When quoting foreign names and place names, some people advocate using the pinyin scheme to spell the word. wait. It can be predicted that this scheme will survive for a long time like Chinese characters. However, some people once believed that written symbols of human languages ??should all follow the path of pinyin script, and scripts that did not meet this standard would be regarded as backward scripts. This is a prejudice without any scientific basis.
5. Regarding the teaching issues of Chinese characters
It is correct to teach Chinese characters according to the teaching methods of Chinese characters. However, the outdated "six scripts" theory (six ways of creating characters including referring to things, pictograms, phonetic sounds, knowing, transferring notes, and borrowing) must be reformed. This result is based on the study of comparative philology and on the basis of Mr. Tang Lan's "Three Books" theory, and proposes the "New Three Books" theory of appearance, borrowed sounds and phonetic sounds.
It includes the reasonable parts of the "Six Books" and eliminates "transfers". Symbolic characters include the three books of "Six Books": pictograms, referring to things, and knowing things; borrowing phonetic characters is just borrowing in disguise. The reason for changing the name to borrowed phonetic characters or phonetic characters is because some people think that there is also a borrowed form character in the pretense, which is created out of nothing and confuses people's ideas. In Mr. Tang Lan's "Three Books", it is inappropriate to exclude borrowed characters and forcefully divide the characters created by the phonological method into pictographic and pictographic categories. The "New Three Books" not only absorbed the research results of predecessors, but also corrected the shortcomings of their predecessors. Mastering the classification standards of the "New Three Books" can play a great role in teaching Chinese characters.
Jiahu carved symbols
A batch of carved symbols were unearthed at the Jiahu site in Wuyang, Henan Province (9,000-7,800 years ago) more than 8,000 years ago, known as Jiahu carved symbols. . Among the 21 engraved symbols in Jiahu, 11 characters have been recognized, which respectively belong to the hexagram Chinese characters that reflect the images of the Li and Kun hexagrams of Yi Xue.
Shuangdun carved symbols
More than 630 carved symbols were found at the Shuangdun site in Bengbu more than 7,000 years ago. The functions of double-pier engraved symbols can be divided into three categories: expressing meaning, stamping, and counting. The Shuangdun engraved symbols reflect the lifestyle of the early Shuangdun ancestors. They already have the nature of primitive writing and are one of the sources of Chinese characters.
Banpo Pottery Symbols
Twenty or thirty kinds of engraved symbols are carved on the rim of the pottery bowl from the Banpo site of the Yangshao Culture 6,000 years ago, namely Banpo Tao Fu, Yu Shengwu believes, "are some simple characters produced in the origin stage of writing." Some of them are numbers.
Qingdun Carved Talisman
The Qingdun site in Jiangsu Province, belonging to the Liangzhu Culture in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, dates back 5,000 years ago and has numerically carved symbols.
Charms carved at Zhuangqiao Tomb
Charms carved at the Zhuangqiao Tomb site in Zhejiang Province, which belongs to the Liangzhu culture in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, date back 5,000 years ago. Some of them are connected into sentences.
Bone inscriptions
Bone inscriptions refer to the symbols carved on animal bones - hieroglyphs or graphic characters. They are the earliest legible characters in my country that mainly record events. Known as "bone inscriptions", it was formed between about 2600 BC and 1300 BC. It was a popular writing during the Longshan Culture period. Since the end of 2010, researcher Ding Zaixian, a well-known scholar and full-time vice president of the Shandong Tourism Industry Association, has successfully and systematically deciphered the bone inscriptions, and comprehensively discussed the inheritance relationship with oracle bone inscriptions and modern Chinese characters from the origin and structure of the characters. .
Taosi Zhuwen
The Taosi ruins in Xiangfen County, Shanxi Province, have been dated and corrected by radiocarbon dating, and their age is approximately 2500 BC to 1900 BC. In 1984, archaeologists discovered a fragment of a flat pot in the Taosi ruins. The stubble around the fragment was painted red. There were two characters written in Zhu on the fragment. One of the characters was "文" and the other one was "Yao". There are many interpretations such as "Yi" and "Ming". The Zhu script is 1,500 years older than the oracle bone script.
Xia Dynasty Shuishi Script
The pottery unearthed from the Xia Ruins in Erlitou, Yanshi, Luoyang City, Henan Province has 24 Shuishi scripts.
A more eclectic opinion holds that Chinese characters "formed a relatively complete writing system" in the middle and late Xia Dynasty 4,000 years ago. Of course, this is not a generally accepted view, because there are still few texts unearthed from the Xia Dynasty.
Oracle bone inscriptions
Oracle bone inscriptions are the oldest and most complete texts among the ancient texts discovered in China. Oracle bone inscriptions mainly refer to Yin Ruins oracle bone inscriptions, also known as "Yin Ruins characters" and "Yin Qi". They are characters carved on tortoise shells and animal bones during the Yin and Shang Dynasties. At the end of the 19th century, the ruins of the capital of the Yin Dynasty were discovered in Xiaotun, Anyang, Henan today. It inherited the writing method of pottery inscriptions and was used by the royal family in the late Shang Dynasty (14th to 11th century BC) to inscribe (or write) on tortoise shells for divination and recording. and writings on animal bones. After the demise of the Yin Shang Dynasty and the rise of the Zhou Dynasty, oracle bone inscriptions continued to be used for a period of time.
Bronze inscriptions
Bronze inscriptions refer to the inscriptions engraved on Yin and Zhou bronzes, also called bell and tripod inscriptions. The Shang and Zhou dynasties were the age of bronzes. The ritual vessels of bronzes were represented by tripods, and the musical instruments were represented by bells. "Zhongding" is synonymous with bronzes. The so-called bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. China had already entered the Bronze Age in the Xia Dynasty, and the technology of copper smelting and copperware manufacturing was very developed.
Because copper was also called gold before the Zhou Dynasty, the inscriptions on the bronzes were called "jinwen" or "jinjinwen"; and because this type of bronzes had the largest number of characters on bells and tripods, they were also called "zhongdingwen" in the past. ". The application of bronze inscriptions dates from the early Shang Dynasty to the end of the Qin Dynasty when the Six Kingdoms were destroyed, about 1,200 years ago. The number of characters in bronze inscriptions, according to Rong Geng's "Inscriptions on Bronze Inscriptions", totals 3,722, of which 2,420 are identifiable.
大篆
Da Zhuan is a font commonly used in the Western Zhou Dynasty and is said to have been created by Boyi of the Xia Dynasty. According to different writing media, seal script can also be divided into bronze inscriptions (or "Zhongding inscriptions") and Zhen inscriptions.
小篆
After Qin Shihuang unified China (221 BC), Xiaozhuan implemented the policy of "writing with the same text and carriages with the same track" and unifying weights and measures. The prime minister Li Si was in charge of it. On the basis of the large seal script originally used in China, it was simplified, canceled the variant characters of other six countries, and created a unified Chinese character writing form. It was popular in China until the end of the Western Han Dynasty (about 8 AD), and was gradually replaced by official script. But because of its beautiful font, it has always been favored by calligraphers. And because its strokes are complex, its form is ancient, and twists and turns can be added at will, seals were carved in seal script, especially official seals that required anti-counterfeiting, until the fall of the feudal dynasty and the emergence of new anti-counterfeiting technology in modern times.
Official Script
Official Script, also known as Han Li, is a common solemn font in Chinese characters. The writing effect is slightly wide and flat, with long horizontal strokes and short straight strokes, giving it a rectangular shape. , pay attention to "the head of the silkworm and the tail of the wild goose" and "twists and turns". Official script originated in the Qin Dynasty and was developed from Cheng Miao's form and theory. It reached its peak in the Eastern Han Dynasty and is known as "Han Li Tang Kai" in the calligraphy circle.
Cursive script
A Chinese calligraphy style characterized by simple structure and continuous strokes. It was formed in the Han Dynasty and evolved on the basis of official script for the convenience of writing. There are Zhangcao, Jincao and Kuangcao.
Regular script
Regular script, also known as regular script, regular script, regular script or real script, is a common font in Chinese calligraphy. The shape of the font is relatively square, unlike the flat shape of official writing. Regular script is still the reference standard for modern Chinese handwriting, and another handwriting style has also been developed - pen calligraphy.
Running Script
Ring Script is produced on the basis of regular script. It is a font between regular script and cursive script. It is to make up for the slow writing speed of regular script and the difficulty of legibility of cursive script. And produce. "Xing" means "walking", so it is not as sloppy as cursive script, nor as straight as regular script. In essence, it is the cursiveization of regular script or the regularization of cursive script. Those with more regular script than cursive script are called "Xing Kai", and those with more cursive script than regular script are called "Xing Cao".
Songti
Songti is a Chinese character printing font invented in the Song Dynasty of China. The strokes vary in thickness, and are generally thin horizontally and thick vertically. There are decorative parts (i.e. "foots" or "serifs") at the ends. Strokes such as dots, strokes, strokes, and hooks have sharp tips. They are white scripts and are often used in books, books, etc. Text layout for magazine and newspaper printing. Because it was introduced to Japan from the Ming Dynasty, it is also called Ming style and Ming Dynasty style.
Imitation of the Song Dynasty
A type of printing font that imitates the fonts engraved on the Song Dynasty books. The thickness of the strokes is even and there are three types: long, square and flat. Also called imitation Song style, imitation Song characters. This involves another font - Song Dynasty. What are the characteristics of Song Dynasty? The horizontal strokes are flat and vertical, the horizontal strokes are thin but the vertical strokes are thick, and the endpoints of each stroke are thicker. These are not characteristics of handwriting using a brush.
Why does Song style have these characteristics? Of course it's because of printing needs. In the Song Dynasty, when woodblock printing flourished, woodblocks were mostly used for engraving and platemaking, that is to say, rectangular wooden boards were used for engraving and platemaking. There are lines on the wooden boards, and the plate making is generally horizontal. In this way, the horizontal lines of the carved characters are consistent with the wood grain and are relatively strong; while the vertical lines of the carved characters cross the wood grain and are easy to break. Therefore, the vertical lines of the font are thicker and the horizontal lines are thinner. Horizontal lines, even if they are strong, tend to fray at the ends, so they are thicker at the ends. Horizontal and vertical, of course, is for the convenience of carving and plate making.
Engraving and plate making is a very time-consuming task. If you want to express the characteristics of handwriting, the engraving must be much larger than the horizontal and vertical dimensions. You will know this by doing a simple experiment. Enter or paste a Chinese character in Windows Notepad. , set the font size to Song Ti No. 9 and Kai Ti No. 9 respectively to see which one is easier to read. Because of the grain of the wood, it will also be more difficult to carve varied curves. Moreover, each wooden board can only print two pages, so a book requires many wooden boards to be carved. If the characters are engraved too large, not only will the carver be more laborious, but the wood board will also be used more, so the characters engraved on the wood board will not be too large. As you can imagine, it is difficult to express the varied, rounded and delicate characteristics of handwriting on such a small reverse lettering. Horizontal and vertical are of course the best choice. It can be seen from the above that all these characteristics of Song style are produced by printing and adapt to the needs of printing. They are very different from handwriting with brush. Later, people imitated the structure and strokes of Song fonts, and changed them into beautiful and narrow printing fonts with consistent stroke thickness, which is called imitation Song fonts.
Helvetica
Helvetica, also known as cube or isoline, has no serif decoration, dignified font shape, horizontal and vertical strokes, and all handwritings are of the same thickness. The boldface of Chinese characters was created based on the boldface of Western sans serifs after modern printing was introduced to the East. Since Chinese characters have many strokes and small black fonts have poor clarity, they were mainly used for article titles at first. However, with the advancement of typewriting technology, there are many boldface fonts suitable for main text. In Chinese, fonts without serifs are usually called boldface, and the category of this word is similar to sans-serif fonts (Sans-serif). Therefore, "black body" is commonly used in Chinese fonts, and "sans-serif" is commonly used in Western fonts. The Song font can be called a serif font. "Gothic" is called Goshikku-tai in Japanese.
Variety style
Variety style is a variant of boldface and a type of artistic word. The characteristic is that the strokes are thicker and try to fill the space as much as possible. At the same time, for the sake of aesthetics, the corners are rounded. Founder, Microsoft and other major font libraries have developed them, and are often used in titles of advertisements, newspapers and periodicals. Variety font is a commonly used art font, (Helvetica, Song font, Variety, Kai font, etc.).
Caiyun font
Caiyun font is an artistic font. It is characterized by being surrounded by smooth curves with hollow strokes that resemble clouds. Originally developed by Changzhou Huawen Printing New Technology Co., Ltd. (SinoType), China, and distributed with the Simplified Chinese version of Microsoft Office under the name "Huawen Caiyun". Later, other font libraries were developed and are now often used for eye-catching titles.
Chinese New Wei
The Chinese New Wei style is majestic, solemn, beautiful, powerful, and at the same time full of rich artistic flavor. Chinese New Wei Dynasty is used as a trademark or logo or annotation in pictures by many media, institutions and websites. Chinese New Wei style integrates fonts and beauty, showing a high degree of unity of art and culture.
Amber font
The font is round and full, novel and lively, the structure is scattered and orderly, thick but not heavy, fat but not bloated, suitable for books, newspapers, magazines and various printed matter The words used to decorate titles and advertisements. ? Baidu Encyclopedia