May all good things come as scheduled, and may all lucky people meet unexpectedly.

May all the beauties come as promised, and may all the predestinations meet.

Xu Shen said in "Shuo Wen Jie Zi Xu": "Mrs. Zhou wrote fifteen pieces of Da Zhuan, which is different from ancient Chinese." Compare the ancient prose with the big seal script, saying that the ancient prose is a general term for the characters before the Book of Poetry.

Because the ancients had no pen and ink, they used bamboo sticks to draw and write on bamboo tubes. This is called book deed, also called bamboo slips. Because bamboo is hard and greasy, writing is not smooth, and the words written are thick and thin, like tadpoles, so it is called tadpole book or tadpole essay. All the lacquer books on bamboo slips can be called tadpoles, not necessarily written by Cang Xie.

Ancient Chinese characters mainly refer to the characters in ancient books, such as the Book of Changes, The Analects of Confucius, Chunqiu, Shangshu, Zhou Li, Lv Chunqiu and Xiaojing, all of which are relatively early characters.

Extended data

The earliest known systematic writing form in China is Oracle Bone Inscriptions, also known as "Wen Qi", "Oracle Bone Inscriptions" or "tortoise shell and animal bones", which mainly refers to the characters carved by the royal family on tortoise shells or animal bones for divination in the late Shang Dynasty (14 ~1century).

During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, no articles were invented to record words, but bamboo slips and silks were used to record words, but silks were expensive, bamboo slips were bulky and the number of words recorded was limited. In order to record more things on a roll of bamboo slips, it is necessary to delete unimportant words so as to carry the most information with the least words.

The early ancient prose was mostly used by the ruling class for divination, sacrifice and publication.

In the Western Han Dynasty, bamboo slips were replaced by paper. When "paper" is used on a large scale, the habit of using "official documents" among the ruling classes has been stereotyped, and the ability to use "classical Chinese" has evolved into a symbol of reading and literacy.