2023年12月16日发(作者：)
Origin and Development of Chinese Calligraphy
What I am going to talk about today has an intimate connection with our
daily life in China. You will find it no matter where and when. It may be
on the square in the sunshine, on the frame of the door during Spring
Festival or places of interest when you are on a journey. Well, that’s
calligrahy. More specific, it’s an art of writing a good hand with the brush.
This ancient technique originated in China and passed on from
generation to generation until today. Time is limited and I mainly
introduced from the following three aspects, origin，important historical
process and current situation.
Through textual research，it’s generally thought that calligraphy can date
back to 5 000 or 6 000 years ago. In the early time, the characters look
more like drawing than script, however, people at that time seemed to
have already known how to make it better-looking. Hand-writing of these
simple words are called prehistorical calligraphy.
When in 221 BC, emperor Qin Shi Huang unified the whole of China
under one central government. He ordered his Prime Minister Li Si to
collect and sort out of writing hitheto to unify the written language
under one system. That is xiaozhuan. More than 2200 years has passed,
script of Li Si could still be seen on the stone on Mount Tai.
A new type called lishu came in the wake of the small seal script in the
same short-lived Qin Dynasty (221-207BC). This was because the
xiaozhuan was too complicated for the scribes in the various government
offices who had to copy an increasing amount of document.
Then the regular script kaishu emerged in Weiqin dynasty. The standard
writing is square in form, non-cursive and architectual in style. At that
time a great master at brush-writing was Wangxizhi who had a profound
influence on Chinese calligraphy. There are many stories about
Wangxizhi spreaded among people. When Wang was a child after his
daily exercise, he cleaned his brush and ink stone in the pond of his
house, year after year, the water of the pond became black--same colour
with the ink. Practice makes perfect, that also proved the saying of
Edsion”talent is 99% sweat”. To learn to write a nice hand in Chinese
calligraphy, persevering practice is necessary.
Over the long ages of evolution, calligraphy flourished in Tang and Song
dynasties. A mumber of eminent figures emerged like “Ou Yangxiu, Su
Dongpo, and Huang Tingjian etc.” These great masters have different
characteristics; they are either rigorous or elegant. Some of their scripts
were carefully preserved by later generations, so we can appreciate their
works on the exhibition of the museums. These characters reflect their
creators’ personality and spirit.
In the past, only children in rich families could afford reading books and
studying calligraphy. Nowadays with the improvement of living standards,
ordinary people have the opportunities to learn the brush-writing
It’s regretful that interest in brush-wrting has been killed among the
young generation in China comparing with the enthusiasm for Internet.
Like chopsticks widely used in every Chinese person, calligraphy was
once entirely Chinses. Brush has been replced by the pen and pencil
which are more convenient. Learning some knowledge of Chinese
calligraphy is necessary, because it’s an important part of the heritage of
national culture.
