What are the characteristics of Chinese characters?

The number of Chinese characters is inaccurate, about100000 (the Chinese character library of Beijing Guoan Consulting Equipment Company has 9 125 1), and only a few thousand Chinese characters are used every day. According to statistics, 1000 commonly used words can cover about 92% of written materials, 2,000 words can cover more than 98%, and 3,000 words have reached 99%. Simplified statistics are not much different from traditional statistics.

With regard to the number of Chinese characters, according to the records of ancient dictionaries, we can see their development.

Cang Xie has 3,300 words and is well-read. The Qin Dynasty had a calendar. In Han Dynasty, Yang Xiong's Xun Bian has 5340 words, and Xu Shen's Shuo Wen Jie Zi [1] has 9353 words. According to the printing performance of Moon Hee in Tang Dynasty, it is recorded that Jin wrote 12824, Wei Yang Chengqing wrote Zitong 13734, and Gu wrote 169655 in Southern Dynasties. Jade Piece is a supplement to Sun Qiang in Tang Dynasty, with 225,665,438+0 words. There are as many as 365,438+0,365,438+09 words in Lei Pian edited by Sima Guang in Song Dynasty, and 53,525 words in Ji Yun edited by officials in Song Dynasty, which was once the book with the largest number of words. Kangxi dictionary in Qing Dynasty has more than 47,000 words. 19 15 The Chinese Dictionary edited by Ouyang Bocun has more than 48,000 words; 1959 the dictionary of dahanhe, edited by tsuji Hashimoto of Japan, has 49,964 words; 197 1 year, The Chinese Dictionary edited by Zhang Qiyun has 49,888 words. 1990 The Chinese Dictionary edited by Xu Zhongshu has 54,678 words; 1994 The Sea of Chinese Characters edited by Leng Yulong has 85,000 words. The fifth edition of the Dictionary of Variant Characters compiled by the education authorities of Taiwan Province Province contains both regular characters and variant characters, with a total of *** 106230 words, which is the dictionary with the largest number of Chinese characters.

There are more than 80,000 Chinese characters in history (there are also more than 60,000 sayings), most of which are variant characters and rare words. The vast majority of variants and uncommon words have been standardized, except for ancient Chinese, which generally only occasionally appears in names and places. In addition, after the first batch of simplified characters, there are a number of "two simplified characters", which have been abolished, but a few numbers are still popular in society.

If learning and using Chinese characters really need to master the sounds, shapes and meanings of 70,000 to 80,000 Chinese characters, then Chinese characters will be the characters that no one in the world can and will not learn and use. However, most of the Chinese characters included in the Chinese Dictionary are "dead words", that is, words that have existed in history and are abandoned in today's written language. According to statistics, there are 589,283 words in the Thirteen Classics (I Ching, Shangshu, Biography of Ram, Analects of Confucius, Mencius, etc. 13 ancient books), including 6,544 variants. Therefore, in fact, there are only over 6,000 Chinese characters used in people's daily life.

In the computer coding standard of Chinese characters, the largest Chinese character coding is CNS 1 1643 in Taiwan Province Province, and the full-character database of version 5.0 can query 87,047 Chinese characters, 1077 1 pinyin word, with 894 symbols. The big five codes commonly used in Taiwan Province and Hongkong include 13053 traditional Chinese characters. GB 18030 is the latest internal code character set in People's Republic of China (PRC). GBK contains simplified characters, traditional characters and 209 12, while earlier GB23 12 contains 6763 simplified characters. Unicode's unified ideographic basic character set for China, Japan and Korea (Korea) contains 20,902 Chinese characters, totaling more than 70,000 characters.

In the early Chinese character system, the number of words was insufficient, and many things were represented by interchangeable words, which caused the ambiguity of text expression. In order to improve the clarity of expression, Chinese characters have gone through a stage of gradual complexity and a large number of words. The excessive increase in the number of Chinese characters makes it difficult to learn Chinese characters, and the meaning that a single Chinese character can express is limited, so the meaning of many single Chinese characters is expressed by Chinese characters, such as common double spelling words. The development of Chinese characters tends to create new words instead of new words. Early unearthed materials related to the origin of Chinese characters in Oracle Bone Inscriptions of Yin Ruins. These materials mainly refer to the carved or painted symbols that appeared on pottery in the late primitive society and early historical society, and also include a few symbols engraved on Oracle Bone Inscriptions, jade and stone tools. It can be said that they provide a new basis for explaining the origin of Chinese characters.

structure

Chinese characters are a combination of form, sound and meaning, and most Chinese characters are composed of form and sound.

Liu Shu is the basic principle of Chinese character formation. Six books are mentioned in the Book of Rites, but the specific contents are not explained. In Shuo Wen Jie Zi [1], Xu Shen in the Eastern Han Dynasty expounded the structural principles of "Six Books": pictographic characters, indicative characters, knowing characters, pictophonetic characters, transliteration characters and loanwords.

Pictographic characters: This method of creating characters is described according to the shape characteristics of an object, and so is the so-called "painting into its object, following its body". Such as the sun, the moon, the mountains and the water, originally depicted the patterns of the sun, the moon, the mountains and the water, and then gradually evolved into today's shapes.

Melons are hieroglyphics. In the word "melon", two strokes represent vines, the middle vertical hook represents melons, and the slap represents leaves. "Cucurbitaceae plants collectively" is the original meaning of "melon". "Like a melon", there are many things that look like melons in real life. For example, "melon skin hat" is a kind of hat; "Guapi Ship" is a kind of ship. "Like cutting a melon", the fate of the melon is divided, which is why it means this. People use "carve up" to mean division or distribution. It also means that several powerful countries unite to carve up the land of weak countries or underdeveloped countries. "Fool" means not smart. The word comes from the ancient "melon seed family" Jiang, who lived in Guazhou (Dunhuang, Gansu) during the Spring and Autumn Period, was called "Guazi". They are very diligent and always work nonstop when they are employed. However, some people regard their honest customs as "stupid", so there are "fools".

Refers to things: this refers to the method of expressing abstract things, using symbols or adding symbols to hieroglyphics to represent a word. The same is true of the so-called "things that each refers to". If people write "up" on it, people write "down" and "blade" on it, and add a little to the blade to indicate that it is the sharpest blade here, and so on. Arrogance is "smelly". People who are "rich" and have fields, "poor" work by "strength", and the traditional meaning of "cheap" is "cheap". The two "brothers" on the right are naturally "cheap" because they compete for money.

Pictophonetic characters: A unique sound represented by a specific shape (root) in a text. Such as Hu. This word can also be a root, combined with different attribute roots, can be synthesized into: butterfly, butterfly, lake, gourd, Hu, etc., with the same pronunciation (some only initials) to represent different things. Shape and sound are the most common methods and verve in Chinese characters.

There are four combinations of pictophonetic characters:

Left form and right sound: emotion, memory, hum, accuracy, structure, description …

Right-shaped left sound: period, war, parrot, pigeon, collar, gone with the wind ...

The form above and the sound below: space, basket, fog, grass, landscape, symbols. ...

From bottom to top: jar, commodity, marriage, base, fur, box. ...

Internal form and external voice: smell, ask, stuffy, beat, weave, argue. ...

The inner voice of appearance: garden, hoarding, disease, longing, pavilion, box ...

Form occupies a corner: Xinjiang, Teng, Planting, Cutting and Carrying. ...

With the reform of Chinese characters, some pictophonetic characters have changed the pronunciation of phonetic parts and no longer play the role of phonetic symbols. If you read half of it, you will be joking. "A scholar can only read half" has become an irony for "scholars" to read wrong words.

Understanding: This word formation method is to use two or more words to form a word and combine the meanings of these words into one meaning. For example, when the sun and the moon merge into one, the sun and moonlight become "bright". The word "person" and "word" are combined into the word "letter", which means that a person kept his promise in the past, that is, he kept what he had said, and "rest", "person" and "wood" were combined together, and a person leaned against a tree to indicate rest.

Some new words are formed by overlapping two or more identical words. Most of the two characters overlap in the left and right coordinate structure, and most of the three characters overlap in the tower-shaped upper and lower structure, which looks like a pyramid in gymnastics. For example, three "people" form a "crowd"; Three "fire" constitute "Yan"; Three "Woods" make up "Sen"; Three "days" constitute a "crystal"; Three "straightness" constitutes "foundation"; Three "waters" constitute "seedlings"; Three "mouths" make up "goods" and so on.

Due to the great changes in fonts, the source of Chinese characters can't be seen. For example, why add a crooked mountain next to a woman's personality? The correct etymological analysis can only be seen from the traditional Chinese character "Fu". The word "fu" on the left of the word "fu" refers to a woman, and the broom next to the woman is a broom. Together, women work at home with brooms. "Women, brooms are given to women" and "strength, fields are given to men" are in line with the social conditions of "women work outside the home" and "men plow and women weave" at that time. The etymology of quite a few words is not easy to see, so people call them "broken words".

"She" is a personal pronoun commonly used in modern Chinese, referring to the woman of a third party. This word is a variant of the ancient word "Xie", which was first used as a third-person female pronoun by Liu Bannong in the 1920s. This is not a new word.

Note turn: this is used to annotate two words, which are synonymous but have different shapes. Xu Shen explained in Hanshu: "Building a class, agreeing to accept each other, and taking the test as usual." What can I say? The ancient word "test" can be said to be "longevity", and "old" has the same meaning as "test", that is, the so-called old people take the test and the candidates are old. The Book of Songs Ya Pu also said: "A textual research on Zhou Wangshou".

Borrowing: In short, this method is to borrow a word to express something else. Generally speaking, if there is something new that can't be described, we should borrow a root with similar pronunciation or attributes to express it. For example, "You" originally meant the right hand (first seen in Oracle Bone Inscriptions), and later it was disguised as "You". Another example is "smell", which means listening with your ears. In "University", there is a phrase "turn a blind eye, listen but don't smell, eat but don't know its taste", which was later disguised as an olfactory verb.

Summarize the above six books-the first two, "The Law of Making Characters" also; Second, the "combination method" is also; The last two items, "using Chinese characters", are the same. In a word, the above principle is the theory of philology summarized by ancient philologists, and the rules of Chinese character creation contained in it are not original by one person, but have evolved over a long period of time in people's use and are the crystallization of collective wisdom from generation to generation.

Forms of Chinese characters

Chinese characters are composed of ideographic roots, such as gold, wood, water, fire and earth, which are combined together like building blocks. Because of its square shape, it is also called "square character". Structurally, Chinese characters have the following characteristics:

Chinese characters written in regular fonts (such as regular script, Song style, official script, seal script, etc. ) is a kind of square character, and each character occupies the same space. Chinese characters can be divided into two parts, namely, knowing words and compound words, and knowing words can't be separated, such as "Wen" and "Zhong". Combined Chinese characters are composed of basic components, accounting for more than 90% of Chinese characters. Common combinations of compound words are: upper and lower structures, such as "smile" and "tip"; Left and right structures, such as "word" and "family"; Semi-closed structure, such as "similarity" and "inclination"; Fully enclosed structure, such as "group" and "meeting"; Upper, middle and lower structure, such as "winning"; Left, middle and right structures, such as "points"; Pin-shaped structure, such as pin. The basic components of Chinese characters include single words, radicals and other non-word-forming components.

The smallest constituent unit of Chinese characters is strokes, and strokes also have certain meanings, such as horizontal painting (1), which can represent the horizon (such as a horizontal line in Chinese characters).

When writing Chinese characters, the direction and order of strokes, that is, the order of strokes, are relatively fixed. The basic rules are: first horizontal and then vertical, first left and then down, from top to bottom, from left to right, first outside and then inside, then sealed, first in the middle and then on both sides. The stroke order of Chinese characters with different writing styles may be different.

In terms of fonts, the fonts of various Chinese characters can be divided into three types. The first category is Song Style and Bold Style (including thick and thin lines) developed from movable type printing in Song Dynasty. The second category is the fonts evolved from calligraphy, such as regular script, imitation song style, running script, official script, calligraphy style, regular script, thin gold style, pen style and so on. The third category belongs to fine arts fonts, such as variety, tanning, amber, water column and so on. Most other fonts belong to the variants of the above three types of fonts, such as: Da Dian Song, Xiao Dian Song, Bao Song, Chang Song, Zhong Song, Yao Ti, etc. Big black, flat black, thick black, isobar (including thick, medium and thin isobar, and then evolved into thick, accurate and thin circle) and so on; From regular script, imitation song, etc. , Chinese books, fine imitation of Song Dynasty, etc. ; Beauty and black evolved from black body and song style; The body evolved from Li et al.

"Bion"

There is only one Chinese character with the least strokes. Some words are not written, but "biang" is a Chinese character with many strokes, with 56 strokes, 45 variants and 59 traditional characters. "biangbiang Noodle" is a kind of noodle originated in Shaanxi, and it is also a brand of noodle restaurant. This word is still in use now, and it has not been widely circulated. It has only become popular in recent years, and the word "biang" can only be found in Kangxi dictionary. In fact, the word "biang" can't be found in Kangxi dictionary.

There is a crossword puzzle about biang:

Fly to the sky at one o'clock, the Yellow River bends two times, open your mouth and talk inward.

One is in the east and the other is in the west. The left side is long, the right side is long, and there is a horse king in the middle.

In the bottom of my heart, next to the moon, put a sesame candy,

Push the car around Xianyang.

Chinese characters with the most strokes

A Chinese character has as many as 84 pictures, which is pronounced "tai-to" in Japanese.

transfer

Chinese characters are written Chinese characters, and each word represents a syllable. Now, Mandarin is used as the standard pronunciation in Chinese mainland. The syllables of Putonghua are determined by one initial, one vowel and tone, and the actually used syllables exceed 1300. Because of the huge number of Chinese characters, there are obvious homophones; At the same time, it also exists in the case that the same word has multiple tones, which is called polyphonic words. This situation is very common in various dialects of Chinese.

Although Chinese characters are mainly ideographic, they are not without phonetic components. The most common are names and places, followed by transliteration of foreign words, such as sofa. In addition, there are some original words, such as "Alas" and "Haha" laughter. But even so, there are still some ideographic elements, especially the names and place names of countries. Even foreign names and place names have some ideographic bottom lines. For example, "Bush" must not be transliterated as "immortal".

Some scholars believe that before the Han Dynasty, the pronunciation of a Chinese character was two syllables, a small syllable and a large syllable. Because Chinese characters themselves are not phonetic, although the number and writing methods of Chinese characters have changed from the Han Dynasty to the 20th century, we can't see the phonetic changes. Special research is needed to infer their pronunciations in ancient Chinese and middle Chinese. The pronunciation of Chinese characters in Japanese can be divided into "phonetic reading" and "training reading", and a word often has multiple pronunciations, because the pronunciations introduced to Japan from China in different periods are different.

In addition to Japan, some multi-syllable characters are also used in other areas where Chinese characters are used, such as "Li" (sea), "Hao" (gallon) and "Hao" (kilowatt). However, due to the official abolition, it is basically not used in Chinese mainland, but it is still used in Taiwan Province Province, and most people understand its meaning.

The earliest phonetic notation methods are reading if and direct notation. The method of reading if is to annotate with words with near sound, and Xu Shen's Shuo Wen Jie Zi [1] adopts this method of phonetic notation, such as "shooting if is correct". Direct notation is to use another Chinese character to express the pronunciation of this Chinese character. For example, a woman speaks for herself, and the speaker says "Yue" is used for phonetic notation.

Both of the above methods have inherent defects. Some words have no homophones or homophones are so uncommon that it is difficult to play the role of phonetic notation, such as "socks".

The anti-tangent method was developed in the Wei and Jin Dynasties, and it is said that it was influenced by Sanskrit, which used pinyin characters. The pronunciation of Chinese characters can be marked by backcutting, that is, the initial consonant of the first word and the vowel and tone of the second word are combined to make phonetic notation, so that all Chinese characters can be combined. For example, the pronunciation of "Lian" is the combination of the initial of "Lang" and the vowel and tone of "Dian".

Since modern times, phonetic symbols in the form of Chinese characters and phonetic symbols of many Latin letters have been developed. Phonetic symbols are still a part of teaching in Taiwan Province Province, but at present, Chinese Pinyin is the most widely used in Chinese mainland.

Because Chinese characters are mainly ideographic, the phonetic notation is weak. This feature makes the literature of the last 1000 years, like the western countries that use pinyin, have no big difference in wording, but it also makes it difficult for people to infer the ancient phonology. For example, the pronunciation of "Pang" comes from "Dragon", but today the former is pronounced as "Pang" and the latter as "Dragon" in Beijing dialect. How to explain this difference is a subject of phonology. You should also pay attention to tones: flat tone, rising tone, rising tone, falling tone and light tone (vowel-a-a-a-b)

Words and phrases

Morpheme is the smallest unit of Chinese ideogram, similar to English words and phrases. Most Chinese characters can form morphemes independently, such as "I", which is similar to that English words consist of a single letter, such as "I". Nowadays, most of the words in the vernacular are composed of more than two Chinese characters. However, unlike the relationship between "words" and "letters" in English, the meaning of morphemes is often related to the meaning of each Chinese character when it forms morphemes independently, thus simplifying memory to a considerable extent. Words include morphemes and phrases composed of several morphemes.

The high efficiency of Chinese characters is reflected in hundreds of basic hieroglyphics, which can be synthesized into tens of thousands of Chinese characters, representing all kinds of things in the sky and underground; Thousands of commonly used words can be easily combined into hundreds of thousands of words.

thorough

Radicals are also called radicals, and people are used to collectively calling them radicals. In the structure of Chinese characters, radicals are word-building components larger than strokes and are the basic units of Chinese characters. For example, the word "skin" in "slope" is the radical of pronunciation, and the word "earth" is the radical of ideographic meaning.

vocabulary

China was called "Purple Book" in ancient times.

Chinese dictionary

It was not until the publication of Kangxi Dictionary that it was called a dictionary. The earliest Chinese dictionary was Shuo Wen Jie Zi compiled by Xu Shen in the Eastern Han Dynasty [1]. Modern times can be roughly divided into two categories: one is comprehensive, such as Xinhua dictionary; One kind is specialized, such as a variant dictionary. 19 15 years, Zhonghua Book Company published the Chinese Dictionary.

The three largest Chinese dictionaries in the world are Chinese mainland's Chinese Dictionary (volume * *13, with 56,000 entries and 370,000 words), China's Taiwan Province Province's Chinese Dictionary (volume * */kloc-0, with 50,000 entries and 400,000 words) and Japanese Dictionary (*). Chinese characters are the characters that record Chinese. It has a history of about 6000 years and is one of the oldest characters in the world.

The most China Chinese character "He": At the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the movable type played by hundreds of actors kept changing, and the same Chinese character "He" was displayed in three different fonts: Da Zhuan, Xiao Zhuan and Kai Shu. This scene has been talked about so far, and this Chinese character with the meanings of "harmony", "ping" and "harmony" was once again selected as the "most China" Chinese character. The latest issue of "China Heritage" magazine released the results of the selection of "100 Chinese Characters with the Most Cultural Significance in China" organized by this organization. The word "he" won the highest number of votes in online voting, and was strongly recommended by experts such as Jen-der Lee, a researcher at the Institute of History and Language of Taiwan's Academia Sinica. [2]

origin

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archaeological finds

Archaeologists in China have published a series of unearthed materials about the origin of characters earlier than Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Yin Ruins. Jia Hu's woodcut has a history of about 7762 years (128) after the physical determination of carbon 14. There are double pier sculptures 7,000 years ago, Banpo pottery sculptures 6,000 years ago, Qingdun site sculptures 5,000 years ago, tomb site couplets, Dawenkou pottery symbols, Taosi site Zhu Wen in Yao and Shun times, and Xia site water calligraphy. The early Oracle Bone Inscriptions is rich in writing system, and the later one belongs to the initial mature stage. These archaeological discoveries may be important clues to the origin of Chinese characters, or they may be different origins of the development of various characters.

In the early 1980s, more complete characters were found on the pottery unearthed from the Xia cultural site in Dengfeng, Henan. This is the earliest written language with exact time confirmed by scholars in China so far. [3]

Old theory

It involves many aspects of social life in Shang Dynasty, including not only politics, military affairs, culture and social customs, but also astronomy, calendar, medicine and other science and technology. Judging from about 1500 characters identified in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, the methods of "pictographic, comprehending, pictophonetic, referring to things, transferring notes and borrowing words" have been developed, which shows the unique charm of China characters. Documents based on tortoise shells and animal bones in Shang Dynasty and early Western Zhou Dynasty in China (about 16 BC-0/0 BC).

Ancient bronze inscriptions

Bronze inscriptions refer to characters cast on bronze wares of Yin and Zhou Dynasties, also known as Zhong Dingwen. Shang and Zhou Dynasties were the bronze age, with the tripod as the representative ritual vessel and the bell as the representative musical instrument. "Zhong Ding" was synonymous with bronze ware. Therefore, Zhong Dingwen or inscriptions on bronze refers to inscriptions cast or carved on bronzes.

Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. China entered the Bronze Age in the Xia Dynasty, and the smelting of copper and the manufacture of bronzes were very developed. Because copper was also called gold a week ago, the inscriptions on bronzes were called "bronze inscriptions" or "auspicious words"; This bronze ware was called "Zhong Dingwen" in the past because it had the largest number of characters on Zhong Ding.

The application time of bronze inscriptions is about 1200 years, from the early Shang Dynasty to the Qin Dynasty's destruction of the Six Kingdoms. According to Rong Geng's Jin Wen Bian, there are 3,722 inscriptions, of which 2,420 can be identified.

There are different words in the inscriptions on bronzes. The content of memory is also very different. Its main content is mostly to praise the achievements of ancestors and princes, but also to record major historical events. For example, the famous Mao has 497 words, covering a wide range, reflecting the social life at that time.

big seal character

big seal character

Dazhuan originated in the late Western Zhou Dynasty and traveled in Qin during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. The fonts are similar to those of Qin Zhuan, but the configurations of glyphs overlap. Representing the present Shi Guwen, it was named after a book written by Tai Shihuan of Zhou Xuanwang. On the basis of the original text, he transformed it and got his name because it was engraved on the stone drum. It is the earliest stone carving text that has been circulated so far, and it is the ancestor of stone carving.

The stroke is changed to square folding, which makes writing faster. When writing on wooden slips with pigments, it is difficult to draw round strokes.

Official script is also called "official character" and "ancient book". On the basis of seal script, in order to meet the needs of convenient writing, the font of seal script is simplified, and the flat and round lines of seal script are changed into straight strokes, which is convenient for writing. It is divided into Li Qin (Guli) and Han Li (Jinli). The appearance of official script is a great change in ancient writing and calligraphy. Official script is a common solemn font in Chinese characters, with a slightly flat writing effect, long horizontal drawing and short straight drawing, and pays attention to "swallow tail of silkworm head" and "twists and turns". It originated in the Qin Dynasty and reached its peak in the Eastern Han Dynasty. Calligraphy is known as "Han Li Tang Kai". It is also said that official script originated in the Warring States period.

Official script is relative to seal script, and its name originated from the Eastern Han Dynasty. The appearance of official script is another great change of China characters, which brings China's calligraphy art into a new realm, is a turning point in the development history of Chinese characters, and lays the foundation for regular script. Official script is flat, neat and exquisite. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, stippling such as skimming was beautified as upward provocation, with different degrees of severity and artistic beauty of calligraphy. Styles also tend to be diversified, which is of great artistic appreciation value.

According to legend, the official script was compiled by Cheng Miao who was not in the prison of Qin Dynasty. By eliminating complexity and simplifying, the font becomes round and square, and the strokes become straight. Changing "Lian Bi" into "broken pen" and changing lines into strokes makes writing more convenient. "Li Ben" is not a prisoner, but a petty official, that is, a small official in charge of documents, so in ancient times, official script was called "Zuo Shu". Lishu prevailed in Han Dynasty and became the main style of calligraphy. As a start-up Qin Li, seal script has many meanings, and it has been continuously developed and processed. It broke the writing tradition since the Zhou and Qin Dynasties and gradually laid the foundation for regular script. In "ousting a hundred schools,

Regular script, also known as official script, or original script, began in the Eastern Han Dynasty. Its characteristics are: square shape, straight strokes, can be used as a model, hence the name. There are many famous calligraphers who have created many representative fonts, such as Ou Ti (Tang), Yu Ti (Tang Yu Shinan), Yan Ti (Tang Yan Zhen Qing), Liu Ti (Liu Tang Gong Quan) and Zhao Ti (Song Yuan Zhao Mengfu). At the beginning, there were not many official scripts left in regular script, which were slightly wider in structure, longer in horizontal drawing and shorter in straight drawing. In the Wei and Jin dynasties handed down from ancient times, such as Zhong You's Epiphany Table, Ji Zhi Table, Wang Xizhi's Le Yi Lun and Huang Ting Jing, they can all be regarded as representative works. Look at its characteristics, as Weng Fanggang said: "Change the wave painting of official script, pick it up, and still keep the vertical of official script."

After the Eastern Jin Dynasty, the north and the south were divided, and calligraphy was also divided into two factions. The calligraphy style of the Northern School has inherited the legacy of Han Li. Its brushwork is simple and rigorous, but its style is simple and rigorous, so it is called "Weibei". Southern calligraphy is more sparse and beautiful than letters. During the Northern and Southern Dynasties, because of regional differences, personal habits and book styles were very different. The books in the North are strong and the books in the South are rich, each of which is wonderful and inseparable, while Bao and Kang Youwei highly admire the books of the two dynasties, especially the epitaphs of the Northern Wei Dynasty. Kang cited ten beauties to emphasize the advantages of Weibei.

Regular script in the Tang Dynasty, like the prosperity of the national situation in the Tang Dynasty, is really unprecedented. Calligraphy style is mature, and calligraphers come forth in large numbers. In terms of regular script, Yu Shinan, Ou Yangxun, Chu Suiliang in the early Tang Dynasty, Yan Zhenqing in the middle Tang Dynasty and Liu Gongquan in the late Tang Dynasty all regarded his regular script works as models of calligraphy. Regular script is a common standard in modern times.

cursive script

Huai Su's cursive works

The cursive script was formed in the Han Dynasty, and it evolved from the official script for simplicity. There are Cao Zhang, Cao Jin and Crazy Grass. Cursive script is a font produced for the convenience of writing. It began in the early Han Dynasty. At that time, it was "Cao Li", that is, scribbled official script, which gradually developed into a kind of "Cao Zhang" with artistic value. At the end of the Han Dynasty, Zhang Zhi changed "Cao Zhang" to "modern grass", and the character style was formed in one fell swoop. In the Tang Dynasty, Zhang Xu and Huai Su developed into "weeds", with continuous strokes and changeable glyphs. Cursive script is commonly used by calligraphers.

Cao Zhang's rescue rod has rules to follow. Representative works, such as the Songjiang version of Urgent Chapter by Emperor Dongwu in the Three Kingdoms Period.

This grass is informal and the brushwork is smooth. Representative works such as "The First Moon" and "Getting Time" by Wang Xizhi in Jin Dynasty.

Mad grass appeared in the Tang Dynasty, represented by Zhang Xu and Huai Su, and became an artistic creation completely divorced from practicality.

Chinese characters are one of the oldest characters in the world and have a great influence on the surrounding areas. They are letters of other characters. It is a written symbol for recording events. Formally, it has gradually changed from a figure to a square symbol composed of strokes, so Chinese characters are generally called "square characters". It has developed from hieroglyphics (ideographs) to phonetic symbols with both sound and meaning, but the overall system is still ideographs. Therefore, Chinese characters have the characteristics of integrating image, sound and meaning. This feature is unique in world writing, so it has unique charm. Chinese characters are the treasures of China's culture for thousands of years, and they are also our lifelong teachers and friends.

Wang Xizhi's Calligraphy

Everyone's spiritual home. Chinese characters can often arouse our wonderful and bold associations and give people beautiful enjoyment.

Chinese characters are the bond of national soul. Making a living in a foreign country, Chinese characters are a kind of sustenance. Even a plaque, a piece of paper, and the square characters on it will attract you like a magnet and make you feel the kindness from your motherland. Because China people's feelings are condensed into the simplest. Every stroke is written in Chinese. Overseas, whether successful or wandering, as long as there are Chinese characters, there will be much comfort and sustenance, because every word has a far-reaching origin, whether pictographic or ideographic, whether knowing or speaking, every China person is the soul of Chinese characters.

Compared with the advantages of pinyin characters

Among the characters used in the world today, Chinese characters and Shuishu belong to non-pinyin characters. In human history, there are cuneiform characters (nail-headed characters) earlier than Chinese characters in Egypt's two river basins and holy books, but they have long been lost. There are two types of characters used in the world, namely, non-pinyin characters (Chinese characters and calligraphy) and pinyin characters (other characters). Some people say that Chinese characters are China's five great inventions and a miracle.

In today's writing, Chinese characters have been used since the Shang Dynasty and have evolved to this day. Legend has it that the Sanskrit alphabet was created by Brahma, the god who created the universe, and given to mankind ("Records of the Western Regions of Datang"). Many other characters borrowed the four-letter system. Sanskrit alphabet, Latin alphabet, Slavic alphabet and Arabic alphabet are called the four major alphabet systems in the world. Sanskrit letters are used in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, China and Tibet. Latin letters are used in English, French, Italian, etc. Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, etc. With kirill letters (or Slavic letters), converted from Greek letters; Latin letters are also transformed from Greek letters. The ancestors of Aramaic alphabet-Alama alphabet and Greek alphabet-Canaanite alphabet were not directly created by their ancestors, but were transformed from Semitic characters. This kind of writing draws lessons from Samui cuneiform and has been reformed. Cuneiform characters were created by Sumerians, holy script characters were created by Egyptians, Chinese characters were created by China, and Shui scripts created by China Shui people were not pinyin characters. Of the four, only Chinese characters and Shuishu are left, and the other two have died out.