The Chinese Writing System - Part 1

Hsiao Chuan

Li Shu

Chen Shu

Tsing Shu

Tsao Shu

Chinese language developed over 5,000 years, the beginnings of written language were first documented as creation myths. In the Legendary Period, a time before recorded history, there were three emperors-Fu Hsi, Shen Nung and Huang Ti. Fu Hsi the ox-tamer created the bagua or more commonly known as the eight trigrams. The symbols consists of continuous and broken lines. Three continuous lines symbolize heaven, three broken lines symbolize earth, and six variations of broken and continuous lines describe wind, water, mountain, thunder, fire, and lake. The trigrams represent more than 1,471 ideas and objects, but there is no evidence that Chinese language was founded on this system. In Chinese Calligraphers and Their Art, the author Ch’en Chih-Mai speculates that literal representation of objects and ideas preceded abstraction. It is likely that pictograms existed before the bagua. The second emperor Shen Nung created a numeral system using knotted string. It is possible that the brush technique of “return” was inspired by knots, but without proof, these assertions remain conjectures. The Yellow Emperor - Huang Ti is the ancestor of the Chinese people. While Fu Hsi and Shen Nung are mythical figures, Huang Ti may have actually ruled between 2697-2597 B.C. His minister, Ts’ang Chieh is credited for inventing the first writing system. Ts’ang Chieh:

After studying the celestial bodies and their formations and the natural objects surrounding him, particularly the footprints of birds and animals, came to realize that things could be told apart by devising different signs to represent them. (Ch’en, 5)

The earliest evidence of a literate culture came from a period between 2205-1766 B.C., known as the Shang Dynasty. The Shang Oracle Bones consists of 100,000 artifacts engraved with pictograms. The writing is arranged vertically but each word differs in orientation and size. Collectively this language called Chia Ku Wen is made of 2,000 characters, and reveals a first attempt at pictorial abstraction. The Shang Dynasty was succeeded by a period of disunion where feudal states and principalities operated independently. Written language, like the state of governance developed in a scattered way until the Qin Dynasty that ruled from 221- 207 B.C. Under the unified rule of Emperor Qin Shih Huang, a standardized writing system was created and employed. All the characters were reconfigured to follow a uniform orientation, size and rectangular shape. This system became the first calligraphic style called Hsiao Chuan.

The preferred writing tool changed from a stylus to a brush. Writing Hsiao Chuan with a brush is labour intensive because the stroke composition is complex and the character still had to appear as if it were a carved line. The calligrapher wrote slowly, burying the brush tip inside the stroke. Instead of re-inventing the writing instrument, a new style was created to suit the brush’s flexibility. Li Shu was first used by clerks within Emperor Qin Shih Huang’s court. This style reduced the number of strokes in a word, allowed for fluid brush movement and added emphasis upon the points entry and exit in a stroke. When the Han people succeeded Emperor Qin Shih Huang, they adopted Li Shu as the official court script. But Li Shu was still restrictive of brush and hand movement and Tsao Shu was invented as a script that keeps “the basic structure of the character in Li Shu, compromise on its formality, allow it to run wild and free, in order to meet the demands of time.” (Ch’en, 46) Tsao Shu traded legibility for speed, so a compromise came in the style of Chen Shu. Chen Shu is a culmination of Hsiao Chuan, Li Shu and T’sao Shu: burying the brush tip inside the stroke, adopting a simplified pictographic form, and exaggerated line variation. Chen Shu also exploded the Chinese figure into eight stroke types. T’se, lo, nu, yo, tse, lueh, cho, and chih are aesthetic variations of horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines. T’se and yo describe the most pleasing ways to write short strokes, lo and nu for horizontal and vertical lines, and tse, lueh, cho, chih are all variations of diagonal lines. The word yong (永) or “eternity” is character composite of all eight strokes.  A manual titled “The Eight of Laws of Yong” described the requisite movements needed for each stroke. When a student begins calligraphy training, the first character he learns is yong. Chen Shu is presently the standard Chinese script. The last calligraphic style invented is called Tsing Shu which in large part resembles Chen Shu but occasionally links brush strokes together. Hsiao Chuan, Li Shu, Tsao Shu, Chen Shu and Tsing Shu are the five major styles practiced by calligraphers today.