Evolution of Modern Chinese Characters
18 min readThe appearance of official script was the turning point in the evolvement from ancient characters to modern characters. In the academic circle scholars technically termed the change of characters from seal script to official script “the change toofficial characters”, which included divisive official script and combined official script. Divisive official script referred to that one radical in seal script was divided into different forms in official script. Combined official script referred to that those different radicals in seal characters combined into the same forms in official script. Modern characters included the character forms of official script, running hand, cursive script, regular script and Song-typeface.
1)Official Script
A legend has been prevailing since the Han dynasty about Cheng Miao’s creation of official script for Qinshihuang. But the legend was obviously inconsistant with the historical facts. Official script originated from the Warring and States period, they were first used by jail officials and were simple written characters created for the officialdom to deal with the heavy work in jails in the state of Qin. So they were also called jail script or assistant script. They were divided into two categories: official script in the Qin dynasty and official script in Han dynasty.
official script in the Qin dynasty also called ancient official script. It was the inmature official script used from the later period of the Warring and Statesperiod to the beginning of the Han dynasty and was transitional form from ancient characters to modern characters. More than 400 bamboo slips in tombs of the Han dynasty in Yinqueshan, Linyin, Shandong province and more than 600 bamboo and wooden slips and a piece of silk with characters on it in Mawangdui Han tomb, and more than 1,000 bamboo slips in Shuihudi tombs of the Qin dynasty in Yunmeng, Hubei province have been excavated.
These characters on bamboo and wooden slips and silk were ancient official script used in the beginning of the Western Han dynasty and had kept the basic traits of official script in the Qin dynasty. Among them the bamboo slips excavated from the Shuihudi tombs of the Qin dynasty in Yunmeng of Hubei province were the typical characters of official script in the Qin dynasty. The contents of them were materials and data in ten lost books, including Annals Records of Qin Dynasty,A Letter from the Commandery Governor and Eighteen Codes of Qin, all of which originated from the end of the Warring and State period and Qinshihuang period. Theforms of these characters on bamboo and wooden slips are quite close to small seal script, the only distinction is whether they are written cursively or not. Official script changed the round turning curve of small seal script to the straight and square lines, thus gradually broke itself away from the pictographic traits and simplified some strokes and radicals of Chinese characters. Characters started to be written with strokes ever since.
official script in the Han dynasty, also termed modern official script, was the official script reformed and changed basing on official script in the Qin dynasty.
Judging from the bamboo slips characters in the later period of Emperor Wu of Han excavated in Juyan and Dunhuang, official script in the Han dynasty was getting mormature. It had totally broken away the structures of seal script to become official script used in the whole society. The forms of modern official script are flat square, even and stable, with certain rules for their writings. For example, the strokes have the distinct trait of “the head of silkworm and the tail of wild goose”, meaning a heavy and plump starting and a swift and gentle ending in writing a stroke.
The straight turning stroke presents waving shape, the end point of the horizontal stroke appears the shape of up-rising. The whole structures are neat and smooth, steady and even. Most of the existent official script representative of the Han dynasty are inscribed on stone and rocks, the famous ones are: Praising the Opening of Shimen Plankway (148 characters), Yi Ying’s Tablet (153 characters),Ritual Vessel’s Tablet（156 characters），Tablet of Westernn Sacred Mountain Temple（165 characters），Xiping Stone Scriptures（175 characters），Cao Quan’s Tablet（185 characters），Zhang Qian’s Tablet（185 characters），and so on.Besides，the early characters on bamboo and wooden slips in the Eastern Han dynasty excavated in Wuweicounty of Gansu province，the bamboo and wooden slips of later period of the Western Han dynasty unearthed in Dingxian county of Hebei province and Datong county of Qinghai province，all belongs to the mature official script of the Han dynasty.
The term of”eight-divided characters”appeared aproximately during the turn of the Han dynasty and the kingdom of Wei.As to its origin，there were many different explanations.Some thought that it was termed because of the size of the character，because the forms were formed with a standard of”dividing the characters into eight part”；some held that it was because this kind of character forms was a little flat，and the strokes of them stretched outwardly，similar to the shape of the character of 八（eight）.Some others regarded that it got its name because in its creation it borrowed the structure of two other scripts:official script created by Cheng Miao in the Qin dynasty and seal script created by Li Si，the Prime Minister of the Qin dynasty.Qi Gong held that people used the term to distinguish the difference between the commonly used official script and the formally used officialscript.Until the Tang dynasty people still called the commonly used character forms（regular script）official script，and called official script used in the Han dynasty”eight-divided”characters.Qi Gong’s explanation may be more reasonable and probably complied with the historical facts.
In its ancient stage the pictographic features of Chinese characters were weakened continuously，but it had never abandoned the pictographic principle of creating characters.Official script，however，abandoned the pictographic factors ofancient characters，and changed them to symbols made up of different radicals，take the characters（bird，horse，fish and swallow）for example.The forms of these characters still smacked of pictographic traits in seal script，but official script changed the tails of the characters of fish and swallow，and changed the tails and feet of bird and horse to four dots，so the original form of the characters can not be traced.Official script did not care the pictographic principle any more and changed the lines and curves according to the objects for which the characters were created into horizontal and straight strokes，changed the round turning strokes to straight turning or broken strokes，divided the forms of characters into some elemental strokes and formed the complete characters.Gradually the shapes of dot stroke，the horizontal stroke，the vertical stroke，the hook stroke，the rising stroke，the left-falling stroke and the right-falling stroke were fixed.Chinese characters are totally written with strokes ever since.
Compared with small seal scrip，the”omitted change”and”wrong-variation”of official script were so many that variant characters increased greatly.Official script combined two or more strokes of seal script and changed them into simpler stroke structures，or directly omitted some parts of seal script.Some characters or their radicals got wrong-variants and were written differently when used as individual characters and as radicals of other characters.Some radicals were differentiated or similarized，that is to say，the whole part of the former characters were divided into several different forms，or the former variant characters were synthesized into one form，which means that the same radicals would be written differently in different characters.For example，the character （snow）in seal script had a（rain）radical and the sound of，but official script omitted the upper part of.The character（wil1）in small seal script had a radical 心（heart）and the sound of ，but official script mistakenly changed it t.The two radicals（town）and（county）are different in seal script but in the same form in official script.
The inscriptions of official script on the memorial tablets in the Eastern Han dynasty represented the culmination of artistry of official script.These tablets had many different shapes and the structures and the methods of writing were various and changeable，vigrous and powerful with tastes.They were squarely and heavily shaped，pretty and dignified.The unrestrained and graceful characters had different styles, incarnating the waving shape and horizontally directed art traits and the simple and imposing aesthetic realm of official characters.
2) Running Hand
When we speak of running hand it reminds us of the three matchless masterpieces of art work of Preface for the Poems Composed at Orchid Pavilion Gathering by Wang Xizhi, Elegy to Yan Jiming, My Nephew by Yan Zhenqin and Model Calligraphy of Poem Written on Cold Food Day in Huangzhou by Su Shi. Then we may ask ourselves, what is running hand and who created it?
It is said that running hand was created by Liu Desheng in later period of the Eastern Han dynasty, and the famous calligraphers Zhong You and Hu Zhao in the Three Kingdoms period were his disciples. Though his running hand was casually created; the characters were written beautifully and romantically. They were graceful and unrestrained and unique at the time. It is a great pity that his calligraphy has no extant. We can judge from the characters written by Zhong You in Model Calligraphy Entitled Mu Tian Bing She (copied by Wang Xizhi) that the characters in it reflected some traits of running hand at the time. Liu’s running hand might be different in some degree from the running hand familiar now to us.
The characters on the bamboo and wooden slips and on paper excavated in Kroraina site were the characters commonly used in the Wei and Jin dynasties. Besides the relatively neat official script and cursive script there was another form of characters whose style was between official script and cursive script. The characters’ style was romantic, graceful and restrained. Their structures of thecharacter forms were not much different from those of official script but the written forms of them were influenced by cursive script and they were much more lively than the formal and neat official script. They had an unique style.
The typical examples were four documents; one was wooden slips in the fourth year (263) of Jingyuan period in kingdom of Wei, the other one was two letters with a signature of “Jicheng”, and another one was a letter with the signature of “Chaoji”, both in the beginning of the Eastern Jin dynasty. They represented runninghand in its early time,a new character form created by ornamenting the strokes and the structures of new official script with some traits of cursive script. Mr. Qui Xigui held that running hand, official script in the Han dynasty, cursive script an draft cursive script were all character styles originated from the writing forms of official script in the Qin dynasty. Among them the earlier official script in Han dynasty was the officially used characters and the later mature draft cursive script and running hand were the commonly used characters. The conclusion accorded with the actual situation of the evolution of Chinese characters at the time.
Running hand characters originated in later the Eastern Han dynasty. It prevailed in the Wei and Jin dynasties and thrived again in the Tang and Song dynasties. Because of their difference in aesthetic style, running hand had only two categories: the type of the Jin dynasty and the type of the Tang dynasty. In the Eastern Jin dynasty the social position of the moble families was relatively independent and they had much freedom. The people in the Jin dynasty enjoyed the nature and were fond of pure conversation, and running hand script at the time was unprecedentedly prevailing. Running hand script in the Jin dynasty advocated taste which was represented by the masterpieces of Wang Xizhi and his sonWan Xianzhi of the time. Wang Xizhi were titled “Sage of Calligraphy”for his pieces of running hand script. His calligraphy art was natural in the use of ink-brush, in the structures of characters and writing rules. They had broken away from the influence of official script, possessed natural grace and were very fluently written.A1l the characters, whether big or small, were written freely but complied with the rules, with very high aesthetic value. Wang Xianzhi’s calligraphy of running hand had very strong personal characteristic, and the characters were written naturally, possessing heroic artistic conception and natural grace.
Compared with the natural, unrestrained and romantic running hand in the Jin dynasty, running hand in the Tang dynasty upheld strict rules. In the Tang dynasty calligraphy was taught as a discipline, and the government established a special post of Erudite of Calligraphy. Furthermore there was a standard in the selection of officials for those who could write running hand beautifully. The aesthetic standardin Tang dynasty greatly promoted the forming of running hand. Yan Zhenqing’s running hand represented the art achievement of running hand in the Tang dynasty. His calligraphy was full of passion with imposing manner, and they were written fast and continuously, showing the true feelings of delightedness.
The forms of seal characters, official script, regular script and cursive script were all standardized. Only running hand, though similar to regular script, was by no means restrained, or similar to cursive script but was not uninhibited. The strokes of running hand were connected with each other in individual characters while keeping the independency of individual characters. On the whole the feature of running hand was that it was easy to be employed, flexible and convinnient, and lyrical and graceful which was similar to the breeze and drizzle in the spring and expediting the growth of the plants in the world. It was the most romantic form of writing characters.
3) Cursive Script
Cursive script has been a beautiful and standard form of Chinese characters. It is broadly and narrowly divided into two different writing forms. In any historicalstages there were the officially used and commonly used writing forms. The official writing forms written cursively was the commonly used writing form. So the broaddefinition of cursive script refers to the official forms of Chinese characters which were cursively written in different historical stages. Any forms of characters had the phenomena of being written cursively for the requirements of concision and pace. Seal characters were cursively written and then be standardized to officialscript. The narrowly defined cursive script doesn’t include the cursively written characters before the Qin dynasty. It normally refers to three forms of charactersevolved from cursively written official script, samely draft cursive script, modern cursive script and wild cursive script.
Draft cursive script was cursive script in the Han dynasty. It was evolved from the cursively writing forms of ancient official script. On the bamboo slips excavated from tombs in Yinqueshan and the characters on silk from Mawangdui of the early Western Han dynasty, we found that draft cursive script had taken on its original form. The later characters on bamboo and wooden slips in Juyan and medical bamboo slips in Wuwei were all written with draft cursive script, indicating that the said script was very popular at the time. Draft cursive script was the prevailing cursive script in the Han and Wei dynasties and its representative work was Easy-Learning Elementary Readers. We have found that though the horizontal strokes are up-rising and the left-and-right-falling strokes were quite distinctive from each other in draft cursive script, many strokes were not brokenly written and in the same characters they are connected with thin lines. What’s more the character forms of draft cursive script is much simpler than those of official script: some strokes are omitted and the amount of the variant characters increased.
Modern cursive script is cursive script evolved from draft cursive script. After the Eastern Jin dynasty calligraphers represented by Wang Xizhi and Wang Xianzhi used the writing strokes of regular script and running hand to reform draft cursive script and created the forms of modern cursive script. The existent works of modern cursive script can be best represented by the masterpieces of Wang Xizhi and Wang Xianzhi. Their works of cursive script possess natural grace and are refined, glowing with radiating vigor. They are similar to the willow twigs in the spring breeze, and finally have became the mainstream in the field of calligraphy. We can see in Model Calligraphy Entitled On the Seventeenth Day that modern cursive script has totally changed the brush work and the directions of brush of official script.
The upper and lower characters in a line and the strokes of the individual characters are connected. Occasionally they are not connected but the relation of them is continuous.
Since the Tang dynasty masters of modern cursive script appeared continuously. The works of cursive script of Sun Guoting, He Zhizhang, Huai Su, Huang Tingjian, Emperor Huizong of Song, Zhao Mengfu, Xie Jin, Dong Qichang and Wang Duo were are masterpieces and have been studied and respected generations after generations.
Wild cursive script was developed basing on modern script by Zhang Xu and Huai Su in the Tang dynasty. Its style is much more cursive than that of modern cursive script. The strokes are continuously connected, very freely without restraint.
Speaking of the art realm of wild cursive script the works of Zhang Xu and Huai Su are really crazy. The brush strokes are passionate and the characters are continuously connected or twined together. They did not stop the ink-brush until several characters were finished and the pace of writing was as quick as gale and lightning, such as the works of Model Calligraphy Entitled Four Ancient Poems by Zhang Xu and Model Calligraphy Entitled Telling of Myself by Huai Su. And the works of cursive script of Huang Tingjian and Zhu Yunming were mainly written with dot-strokes, similar to the bright stars in the sky with magnificence, such as Li Bai’s Poem on Remembering Past Trip by Huang Tingjian.
In the history of the development of Chinese characters the simplification ofcharacters was greatly influenced by cursive script because their strokes are simpler than those of other character forms. Many simplified characters at present have come from the regular forms of cursive script.
4) Regular Script
The original term of regular script was official used script or real script. It was evolved from the omitted official script in the Han dynasty and changed its name into regular script in the Tang dynasty. During the Wei, Jin dynasties and the Southern and Northern dynasties official script was gradually disused and regular script was gradually getting mature. Among the existent characters of the Wei and Jin dynasties Gu Lang’s Tablet (272), Cuan Baozhi’s Tablet (405) and the handwritten copy of History of Three Kingdoms in the Jin dynasty excavated in Xinjiang were all written with regular script, but with strong traits of the brush work of official script. Discarding the trace left in official script, regular script in the Tang dynasty was completely mature.
The development of regular script underwent finalizing stage, prevailing stage, prosperous stage and commonly utilizing stage.
The finalizing stage had experienced a rather long time. After the common use of ancient official script,”eight-divided characters”and cursive seal script, Chinese characters were in the period of changing their forms and structures and entered a neat and square period, that was, the period of regular script. This was a natural trend in the history. It is said that the earliest calligrapher of regular script is Zhong You in Three Kingdoms period, and his calligraphy works of regular script existent are Memorial of Manifesto to the Throne, Memorial of Recommending Jizhi to the Throne and Congratulation Memorial to the Throne. The character forms of these works use horizontal and right falling strokes to take the place of the waving strokes of “the head of silk worm and the tail of swallow”in official script, and have broken away from the right and square structures of official script. The character forms of Memorial of Manifesto to the Throne and other works originated from early running hand. the early running hand looked rather neat and dignified.
The end of the horizontal strokes is in the same direction and are added with some right falling strokes and rigid hooks. So Sun Kuang in the Ming dynasty held that “small regular script of Zhong You and Wang Xizhi were running hand of official script”. It indicats that regular script was one of the branches of running hand in its early period.
During the Southern and Northern dynasties regular script was in its prime and became the standardized official characters at the time. There were many calligraphers in the Southern dynasties. According toPhapsodic Treatise on Calligraphy by Dou Ji, there were 25 calligraphers in Liu Song,15 in Qi,21 in Liang and 21 in Chen. Monk Zhiyong’s Thousand-Character Classical Text Written in Regular and Cursive Scripts represented the achievement of regular script calligraphy at the time.
The characters on the memorial stone tablets in the Northern dynasties are veryfamous. They are mainly written in regular script. Due to their unique style they are called the”tablets inscriptions of Northern Wei dynasty”. The style of the tablets in its early stage was simple and close to the “eight-divided characters” and official script. The traits of the characters on the tablets in the middle stage such as Zhang Menglong’s Tablet, Inscriptions of Twenty Longmen Statues, Tablet Inscriptions of Zhang Heini and Cliffside Inscriptions of Shimen is that the structures of the falling strokes are closely connected, and they are imposing withvigor while the strokes are steep with moving and jumping traits. The tablets in th later stage are represented by Jingshiyu Cliffside Inscription of Vajra Sutra in Taishan Mountain, the characters on it are flat and horizontally shaped, with steady, calm and elegant traits. But after the Tang dynasty the tablet style of the Northern Wei dynasty was discarded.
Since the beginning of the Tang dynasty the development of regular script had been in its prosperous stage. Ouyang Xun, Yu Shinan, Chu Suiliang and Xue Ji were respected as “four great masters in the early Tang dynasty”. Their works have combined the advantages of the calligraphy of regular script in the Southern and Northern dynasties and set the rules for the writing of regular script. Ouyang Xun’s regular script is ranked as “the number one regular script in Tang dynasty”, which features the trait of “suddenness”. The regular script of Chu Suiliang has the repution that “among the characters the gold appeared and the jade ornamented, andthe rules were refined and elegant”. The forms are thin in appearance but actuallywith a full figures, soft outwardly and firm inwardly and have their own features, greatly influencing the calligraphy of the later generations.
Starting from the Tang prime, regular script were reformed and had shaped its new character forms which was characterized as full, round, simple and pretty, and they were represented by Yan Zhenqing and Liu Gongquan. Their works are full of edges, the wielding of the ink-brushes are exaggerated, the moving of the brushes stresses on pauses and shifts in order to reinforce the beginning or the ending of strokes, and in the delicate and subtle places appears sudden sharpness. The structures are imposing with great boldness of vision. They are neat, rigorous and sophisticated. But in later period they look stereotyped and stiff.
The forms of regular script had been perfected in the Tang dynasty. With the death of Liu Gongquan regular script developed into its utilizing stage. After the Five Dynasties the masters of regular script were quite few and among them wereEmperor Huizong of the Song dynasty and Zhao Mengfu. Emperor Huizong created the “slender gold style”of regular script, which is very peculiar. Zhao Mengfu’s regular script originated from Li Yong of the Tang dynasty and abided by Wang Xizhi’s style of wielding the brush, reflecting a sophisticated and charming art feature. It is called “Zhao style”by the later generations.
In the stage of regular script the forms of Chinese characters mainly were rectangular-shaped and were finalized as the true “square-shaped character”.
5) Song Typeface
Song typeface originated from the printing character forms when the technology of block printing was prevailing in the Song dynasty. For over one thousand years Song typeface has been in use. The forms of Song typeface are square, the strokes are horizontally flat and thin, vertically thick with clear edges. Their structures are rigid, neat and even, and the strokes are clearly regulated.
The works of regular script the great masters of in the Tang dynasty such as Ouyang Xun, Yan Zhenqing and Liu Gongquan are the summit of the standardized writing of Chinese characters, becoming the models for the printing characters at the time.
The combination of Chinese calligraphy with the blockprinting created Song typeface.
In dealing with the dot stroke, left falling stroke, right falling stroke and the turning part of the strokes they technically kept the basic traits of calligraphy, inheriting the aesthetic taste of Chinese calligraphy. Judging from a different perspective, regular script in the Tang dynasty were the turning point of being on the decline for they were written strictly complied with the writing rules and characters were in the inclination of being squarely and stereotyped shaped. But it was the beginning of Song typeface.
The strokes of Song typeface are horizontally flat and thin, vertically thick, the forms of characters are upright and foursquare, the strokes are written rigidly, the starting and ending strokes were full of clear edges, embodying the taste of traditional wooden carvings. These edges are the unique decorating traits on the strokes added by the carving workers, for during the long period of character carving they concluded the features of regular script of the Tang dynasty and dealt with them technically. They kept the true nature of regular script of the Tang dynasty and characters were much more upright and foursquare, as well as more forceful. In the process of the traditional printing the traits of the carving combined the calligraphy taste with the taste of the carving print and formed the typical features of Song typeface.
The above is just a brief summary of the history of the evolution of Chinese characters. We have found that though the forms of Chinese characters have changed a g, its basic pictophonetic nature remains unchanged.
