Chinese calligraphy
Chinese calligraphy is the writing of Chinese characters as an art form, combining visual art and interpretation of their literary meaning. This type of expression has been widely practiced in China and has been generally held in high esteem across East Asia. Calligraphy is considered one of the four most-sought skills and hobbies of ancient Chinese literati, along with playing stringed musical instruments, the board game "Go", and painting. There is some general standardization of the various styles of calligraphy in this tradition. Chinese calligraphy and ink and wash painting are closely related: they are accomplished using similar tools and techniques, and have a long history of shared artistry. Distinguishing features of Chinese painting and calligraphy include an emphasis on motion charged with dynamic life. According to Stanley-Baker, "Calligraphy is sheer life experienced through energy in motion that is registered as traces on silk or paper, with time and rhythm in shifting space its main ingredients." Calligraphy has also led to the development of many forms of art in China, including seal carving, ornate paperweights, and inkstones.
Characteristics
In China, calligraphy is referred to as shūfǎ or fǎshū, literally 'way/method/law of writing'; shodō in Japan ; and seoye in Korea ; thư pháp in Vietnam.Chinese calligraphy appreciated more or only for its aesthetic quality has a long tradition. Today it is regarded as one of the arts in the countries where it is practised. Chinese calligraphy focuses not only on methods of writing but also on cultivating one's character and taught as a pursuit.
Chinese calligraphy used to be popular in China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Hong Kong. In Taiwan, students were requested to write Chinese calligraphy starting from primary school all the way to junior high school on a weekly basis at least to the year 1980.
Chinese script styles
Oracle bone script
was an early form of Chinese characters written on animals' bones. Written on oracle bones—animal bones or turtle plastrons—it is the earliest known form of Chinese writing. The bones were believed to have prophecies written on them. The first appearance of what we recognize unequivocally to refer as "oracle bone inscriptions" comes in the form of inscribed ox scapulae and turtle plastrons from sites near modern Anyang on the northern border of Henan province. The vast majority were found at the Yinxu site in this region. They record pyromantic divinations of the last nine kings of the Shang dynasty, beginning with Wu Ding, whose accession is dated by different scholars at 1250 BC or 1200 BC. Though there is no proof that the Shang dynasty was solely responsible for the origin of writing in China, neither is there evidence of recognizable Chinese writing from any earlier time or any other place. The late Shang oracle bone writings constitute the earliest significant corpus of Chinese writing and it is also the oldest known member and ancestor of the Chinese family of scripts, preceding the Chinese bronze inscriptions.Chinese bronze inscriptions
were usually written on the Chinese ritual bronzes. These Chinese ritual bronzes include Ding, Dui, Gu, Guang, Gui, Hu, Jia, Jue, Yi, You, Zun, and Yi. Different time periods used different methods of inscription. Shang bronze inscriptions were nearly all cast at the same time as the implements on which they appear. In later dynasties such as Western Zhou, Spring and Autumn period, the inscriptions were often engraved after the bronze was cast. Bronze inscriptions are one of the earliest scripts in the Chinese family of scripts, preceded by the oracle bone script.Seal script
Seal script is an ancient style of writing Chinese characters that was common throughout the latter half of the 1st millennium BC. It evolved organically out of the Zhou dynasty script. The Qin variant of seal script eventually became the standard, and was adopted as the formal script for all of China during the Qin dynasty.Clerical script
The clerical script is an archaic style of Chinese calligraphy. The clerical script was first used during the Han dynasty and has lasted up to the present. The clerical script is considered a form of the modern script though it was replaced by the standard script relatively early. This occurred because the graphic forms written in a mature clerical script closely resemble those written in standard script. The clerical script is still used for artistic flavor in a variety of functional applications because of its high legibility for reading.Regular script
is the newest of the Chinese script styles. The regular script first came into existence between the Han and Wei dynasties, and was not used commonly until later. The regular script became mature stylistically around the 7th century. The first master of regular script is Zhong Yao. Zhong Yao first used regular script to write some very serious pieces such as memorials to the emperor.Semi-cursive script
, is a cursive style of Chinese characters. Because it is not as abbreviated as cursive, most people who can read regular script can read semi-cursive. It is highly useful and also artistic.Cursive script (East Asia)
originated in China during the Han dynasty through the Jin period. The cursive script is faster to write than other styles, but difficult to read for those unfamiliar with it. The "grass" in Chinese was also used in the sense of "coarse, rough; simple and crude." It would appear that cǎo in the term caoshu "grass script" was used in this same sense. The term cǎoshū has broad and narrow meanings. In the broad sense, it is non-temporal and can refer to any characters which have been hastily written. In the narrow sense, it refers to the specific handwriting style in Han dynasty.History
Ancient China
Chinese characters can be retraced to 4000 BC signs.In 2003, at the site of Xiaoshuangqiao, about 20 km south-east of the ancient Zhengzhou Shang City, ceramic inscriptions dating to 1435–1412 BC have been found by archaeologists. These writings are made in cinnabar paint. Thus, the dates of writing in China have been confirmed for the Middle Shang period.
The ceramic ritual vessel vats that bear these cinnabar inscriptions were all unearthed within the palace area of this site. They were unearthed mostly in the sacrificial pits holding cow skulls and cow horns, but also in other architectural areas. The inscriptions are written on the exterior and interior of the rim, and the exterior of the belly of the large type of vats. The characters are mostly written singly; character compounds or sentences are rarely seen.
The contemporary Chinese character's set principles were clearly visible in ancient China's Jiǎgǔwén characters carved on ox scapulas and tortoise plastrons around the 14th–11th century BCE. Brush-written examples decay over time and have not survived. During the divination ceremony, after the cracks were made, characters were written with a brush on the shell or bone to be later carved. Each archaic kingdom of current China continued to revise its set of characters.
Imperial China
For more than 2,000 years, China's literati—Confucian scholars and literary men who also served the government as officials—have been connoisseurs and practitioners of this art. In Imperial China, the graphs on old steles—some dating from 200 BC, and in xiǎozhuàn style —are still accessible.Scribes in China and Mongolia practiced the art of calligraphy to copy Buddhist texts. Since these texts were so venerated, the act of copying them down was supposed to have a purifying effect on the soul. "The Act of copying them could bring a scribe closer to perfection and earn him merit."
In about 220 BC, the emperor Qin Shi Huang, the first to conquer the entire Chinese basin, imposed several reforms, among them Li Si's character unification, which created a set of 3300 standardized xiǎozhuàn characters. Although the main writing implement of the time was already the brush, little paper survives from this period, and the main examples of this style are on steles.
The lìshū style which is more regularized, and in some ways similar to modern text, were also authorised under Qin Shi Huang. While it is a common mistake to believe that lishu was created by Cheng Miao alone during Qin Shi Huang's regime, lishu was developed from pre-Qin era to the Han dynasty.
During the fourth century AD, calligraphy came to full maturity. The kǎishū style —still in use today—and attributed to Wang Xizhi and his followers, is even more regularized. reached its peak in the Tang dynasty, when famous calligraphers like Yan Zhenqing and Liu Gongquan produced most of the fine works in kaishu. Its spread was encouraged by Emperor Mingzong of Later Tang, who ordered the printing of the classics using new wooden blocks in kaishu. Printing technologies here allowed shapes to stabilize. The kaishu shape of characters 1000 years ago was mostly similar to that at the end of Imperial China. But small changes have been made, for example in the shape of 广 which is not absolutely the same in the Kangxi Dictionary of 1716 as in modern books. The Kangxi and current shapes have tiny differences, while stroke order is still the same, according to old style.
Cursive styles such as xíngshū and cǎoshū are less constrained and faster, where more movements made by the writing implement are visible. These styles' stroke orders vary more, sometimes creating radically different forms. They are descended from clerical script, at the same time as regular script, but xíngshū and cǎoshū were used for personal notes only and were never used as a standard. Caoshu style was highly appreciated during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han.
Styles which did not survive include bāfēnshū, a mix of 80% xiaozhuan style and 20% lishu. Some variant Chinese characters were unorthodox or locally used for centuries. They were generally understood but always rejected in official texts. Some of these unorthodox variants, in addition to some newly created characters, were incorporated in the simplified Chinese character set.