History of Chinese Calligraphy essays

History of Chinese Calligraphy essays Chinese calligraphy, over the long ages of evolution, has developed various styles and schools, constituting an important part of the heritage of national culture. To obtain a better understanding of Chinese calligraphy, it is imperative to understand the history of Chinese writing and how it evolved over time. The oldest known written language discovered was Jia Gu Wen(also known as Oracle Bone). Characters were carved onto Jia Gu which meant tortoise shell and bone. Characters at the period of time closely relate to the appearances of the objects. For example, the character for man consisted of a curved line representing the head, body and leg of a person with another line joined to it which represented the arms. It was the main written language used in Shang dynasty (1600B.C. 1046 B.C.) but it was possibly still used up to West Zhou dynasty (1046B.C-771B.C.). Da Zhuan characters were used from late Shang dynasty to Zhou Dynasty. They were complicated and contained a fair amount of detail. The characters often contained a little story within them which led to the complexity. There were no standard scripts and the same character may be written differently by calligraphers from different locations. An example was the character for fish, one version had three fins and the other had four fi ns, however their general appearances were similar. In 221 B.C., Qin Shi Huang united the old China. Da Zhuan was simplified and stardardised to form Xiao Zhuan which was the official form of writing used in Qin dynasty. Some characters were similar to modern day writing, including the character for car which was essentially the same as the modern version. Li Shu was also very popular at this period of time because it was much more flowing and better adapted to writing with brushes. Li Shu characters resemble most modern characters with differences usually in angle of strokes. During common ...