Chinese characters are the characters which record Chinese language; it has already had a history of more than 5,000 years. As the tool of recording, keeping and spreading knowledge, Chinese characters are an indispensable part in Chinese civilization.

Cang Jie (仓颉) is the founder of Chinese characters in the ancient mythical legend of China. Certainly Chinese characters can’t be created alone by Cang Jie, but created by a lot of people. What we pay attention to isn’t who create Chinese characters, but the far-reaching historical significance of Chinese characters. The appearance of Chinese characters indicated China’s history entered the era recorded by characters. It has important influence to China’s history.

Chinese characters constitute one of the oldest forms of writing in the world. Archaeologists making excavations since the 1970s have discovered that characters were already in use in the Stone Age, even though the symbols can probably not be considered script in the true sense of the word. When scholars consider the early history of the characters, they often focus on the Shang dynasty because of the rich historical material from the period.

Since the sixth century A.D., old pieces of bone, called Loong bones, reputedly possessed of beneficial medical powers, have been sold in pharmacies in northern China. In 1899 a Beijing scientist noticed that the bones had inscriptions; and when the symbols were investigated, some could be interpreted as ancient forms of modern Chinese characters. Their place of origin turned out to be the remains of a Shang dynasty capital, and its excavation some thirty years after the discovery yielded tens of thousands of the inscribed Loong bones.

The bones are the remains of Shang soothsayers’ archives. The Shang people collected turtle shells or shoulder blades from oxen, drilled shallow holes at certain points, and stuck red-hot bronze rods into the indentations. The resulting cracks in the shells and bones were interpreted by the court soothsayers. The prophecies were carved beside the cracks, and the bones were filed in vast archives in the capital. The characters on the bones are called oracle bone characters. Their uniformity and the wide vocabulary employed suggest that even three thousand years ago they may already have had a long history. About one-third of the oracle bone characters in the archives have been deciphered. The structure of the oracle bone characters shows that they are forerunners of modern Chinese script.

Oracle bones are not our only clues to the origins of Chinese characters. Another source of knowledge is inscriptions on bronze vessels used for sacrifices and other rituals. Despite the abundant material, however, the origins of many characters remain unclear. Only a small number of characters have had their heritage unequivocally elucidated.

In older times there was no standardized way of writing, and the same character would appear in any number of variants. Later, characters gradually became more uniform. The changes were determined in part by new writing materials (brush, silk, paper) and practical considerations (decreasing the number of strokes to make the characters easier to write), but also by determined efforts of the authorities.

When the First Emperor of Qin Dynasty united China in the third century B.C., he standardized the characters and created what is now called the small seal script. This script is a simplified form of the style that had been in common use earlier, which we call the great seal script. The small seal script is still used in carving the stone seals with which the Chinese stamp scrolls and documents. It retains many features of the script on the ancient oracle bones.

The development of clerical script ran parallel with that of seal script. Clerical script was an even more simplified form of writing, employed at first only for unofficial business.

To write faster than is possible with clerical script, a highly simplified cursive script was developed. In this style, which became known as Caoshu, many separate strokes may be shortened into a single one, and whole parts of a character may be omitted. Strong personal variation makes it hard for the uninitiated to read, as is the case with English shorthand today. Caoshu is one of the three styles used by modern Chinese in their everyday life.

The two other styles commonly used in present-day China are Kaishu and Xingshu, Kaishu, or standard script, is the most important. It developed in the second century A.D. as a mixture of standardized Caoshu and clerical script. The major features of Kaishu are distinctness and legibility-every character has a definite form, and only minor variations are allowed. Kaishii is the model for the printed characters in books, magazines, and newspapers, and it is the style learned by Chinese schoolchildren. Therefore, it is the style that we will practice in this book.

Xingshu, like Caoshu, is a sort of cursive script that is quicker to write than Kaishu, but it is not as extremely personal as Caoshu and is therefore easier to read. An adult Chinese usually writes in a mixture of Xingshu and Caoshu, much as those of us comfortable with a Latin alphabet usually write in cursive script rather than print script.

For nearly two thousand years Kaishu has, without significant alterations, served as the standard Chinese script. To promote literacy and increase the efficiency of writing, the Chinese government undertook a script reform in 1956. A new set of simplified characters was set down as the standard for the whole country, and are used now.

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