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Development history

The evolution and development of Chinese characters has always been a dynamic process. The ancients poured their thoughts and observations on things into the composition and expression of words, which endowed Chinese characters with richer connotations and changeable forms.

oracle bone script

The oldest Chinese character that can be found today is Oracle Bone Inscriptions, which was formed in the late Shang Dynasty, about14th century BC. Oracle Bone Inscriptions wrote on tortoise shells or animal bones, which was mainly used for divination or recording. Because Oracle Bone Inscriptions evolved from pictures, it also belongs to hieroglyphics.

Ancient bronze inscriptions

Later, with the appearance and popularization of bronzes, in the Western Zhou Dynasty, people began to cast characters on bronzes widely, which was called "bronze inscription". The inscriptions on bronze in Shang Dynasty were mostly pictographs and generic characters synthesized from pictographs. These characters are just like pictures, vivid, vigorous and natural, and some are concave and convex.

Big seal and small seal

Legend has it that Da Zhuan was created in the history books of the Zhou Dynasty, and it is a Chinese character font in the transition from ancient Chinese characters to Xiao Zhuan. Biography was written by Li Si, Prime Minister of Qin State during the Warring States Period. Compared with the big seal, the small seal has a simple, regular and harmonious body structure, even and neat strokes, and the radicals have also changed and merged to some extent. Compared with the big seal script, the picturesqueness of the small seal script is greatly weakened, and the structure of each word is relatively fixed.

official script

Shortly after the popularity of Xiao Zhuan, the people created a new book style that is simpler and more stereotyped than Xiao Zhuan, which is "official script". At first, official script was a scribbled and irregular seal script. By the time Qin Shihuang unified the characters, the official script had formed a fixed and standardized font. The appearance of official script is an important milestone in the development history of Chinese characters. Before the official script, Chinese characters were written with lines, but after the official script, Chinese characters were composed of left and right strokes. After Li Shu appeared, the structure of Chinese characters was basically fixed.

regular script

Regular script evolved from official script, which flourished at the end of Han Dynasty and in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. Until now, it is still the standard font of Chinese characters, with a history of nearly 2000 years. Regular script is also called "original" or "regular script", which means regular, neat and exemplary, that is to say, this font can be used as a model, that is, a standard font.

Simplified Chinese characters

Since ancient times, many Chinese characters have been written in various ways, some with more strokes and some with fewer strokes. Simply put, many strokes are called traditional Chinese characters, and few strokes are called simplified Chinese characters. After the founding of New China, the simplification of Chinese characters was carried out in an all-round way, and finally the simplified characters we see today were gradually formed!