Northern China believes in Buddhism and builds temples and grottoes, so statues, cliff carvings, epitaphs and copied scriptures appear in large numbers. Twenty years after moving the capital, Beibei's regular script reached its peak. Different from the new style calligraphy which inherited the brushwork of the two kings in the south and took handwritten letters as the main form, the calligraphy of inscriptions prevailed in the Northern Dynasties.
After the Northern Wei Dynasty moved its capital to Luoyang, the calligraphy style changed, from the simplified characters of Pingcheng era to regular script in the new works of the Northern Wei Dynasty. It started with the statue of Niu Jue in the Twenty Classics of Longmen, and then became a common practice in Mangshan epitaph, marking the high maturity of regular script in the Northern Wei Dynasty.
A large number of stone carvings in the Northern Dynasties are mainly practical, showing the beauty of practical calligraphy, while southern literati and calligraphers consciously pursue personality liberation, showing a pure artistic tendency of appealing to both refined and popular tastes.