What is the evolutionary history of Chinese font?

Writing is an important tool for human beings to record language and civilization. It can be said that there is no civilization without words. There have been many ancient Chinese characters in history, but with the agitation of historical torrent, only China characters survived. The development of China characters has gone through a long process, and many changes have taken place from ancient characters to modern characters. Today, we will briefly talk about the development history of Chinese characters in China.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions is the earliest China script discovered by China, which was carved on tortoise shells or animal bones in Shang Dynasty. These words are mainly used to predict good or bad luck. When encountering major events, people will ask for divination, such as wars and natural disasters, in order to solve them.

In divination, when the carved tortoise shell burns on the fire, there will be cracks in the tortoise shell, and then the priest will judge the quality according to the cracks. These words carved on animal bones for divination are Oracle Bone Inscriptions.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions was followed by Jin Wen. With the arrival of the Bronze Age, the characters cast on bronzes gradually became popular. In the pre-Qin period, copper was called gold, and later generations also called the words on ancient bronzes bronze inscriptions. Bronze inscriptions have shown good writing and practicality, with even, round and flat lines and more calligraphy elements.

Bronze inscriptions reached their peak in Shang and Zhou Dynasties, and in Qin Dynasty, an important figure-Qin Shihuang Ying Zheng appeared. He felt that the writing of the seven countries in the world was too messy, and he wanted to make a plan of "the same car and the same book", so he had a unified writing-Xiao Zhuan. Although the Qin dynasty existed for a short time, only a few decades, seal script, as a kind of calligraphy, has been recorded by history forever.

In the Han Dynasty, an important font appeared in the history of calligraphy in China, that is official script. A very important change has taken place from seal script to official script, that is, official script change. The change of official script is an important turning point in the development of China writing, ending the stage of ancient writing. The characters after the change of official script are closer to the characters used now, and easier to identify than the ancient characters. Official change is the watershed of ancient and modern figures.

After the Han Dynasty, all Chinese characters appeared in the Wei and Jin Dynasties. After entering the Eastern Han Dynasty, after the processing of literati and calligraphers, cursive script was formed on the basis of official script, with a relatively regular and strict shape, which can be used in some official occasions, and is called Cao Zhang. The appearance of Cao Zhang greatly accelerated the writing speed of characters and enhanced the practicability of characters.

During the Wei and Jin Dynasties in the Three Kingdoms, regular script and running script gradually sprouted and formed. It is said that regular script was created by Zhong You, whose regular script "Declaration Form" was handed down to later generations and had a great influence, and was honored as the ancestor of regular script by later generations.

Also known as "clock and king" with Wang Xizhi. Although there were traces of running script before Wang Xizhi, it was finally formed in Wang Xizhi's hands. Wang Xizhi made great changes to the running script, turning the clumsy taste of ancient China characters into beautiful modern characters.

The development of Chinese characters was completely completed in the Wei and Jin Dynasties, and so far five calligraphy styles have appeared. From Oracle Bone Inscriptions to Xing Kaishu, China characters experienced a long evolution. But during this period, it also reformed itself, making it more convenient for people to use and gaining great vitality.

Development enlightenment:

From the development history of Chinese characters mentioned above, we can draw two inspirations:

(1) The structure of Chinese characters can change greatly in a short time.

This is reflected in the transformation from big seal to small seal, from small seal to official script, and from traditional Chinese characters to simplified Chinese characters.

(2) The reform of Chinese characters corresponds to the great development of productive forces.

This is reflected in the fact that the two active periods of Chinese character reform (Qin Dynasty and 20th century) both occurred in the period of great development of productive forces.

Refer to the above? Baidu Encyclopedia-Evolution of Chinese Characters