1 Oracle bone inscriptions Oracle bone inscriptions mainly refer to the oracle bone inscriptions of the Yin Ruins. They are the characters carved (or written) on tortoise shells and animal bones by the royal family in the late Shang Dynasty (14th to 11th centuries BC) in China for divination and recording events. It is the oldest and most complete text among the ancient texts discovered in China. Oracle bone inscriptions are an ancient Chinese script and are considered to be the early form of modern Chinese characters. Sometimes they are also considered to be one of the calligraphy styles of Chinese characters. It is also the oldest mature script in China. Oracle bone inscriptions are also called deed inscriptions, tortoise shell inscriptions or tortoise shell and animal bone inscriptions. Oracle bone inscriptions are a very important ancient Chinese character material. Most of the oracle bone inscriptions were found in the Yin Ruins. The Yin Ruins are famous ruins from the Yin and Shang era, located in Xiaotun Village, Huayuanzhuang, Houjiazhuang and other places in the northwest of Anyang City, Henan Province. This place was once the location of the capital of the Central Dynasty in the late Yin and Shang Dynasties, so it is called Yin Ruins. These oracle bones are basically divination records of the rulers of the Shang Dynasty. The rulers of the Shang Dynasty were very superstitious, such as whether there would be disaster within ten days, whether it would rain, whether there would be a good harvest of crops, whether the war would be won, which sacrifices should be made to ghosts and gods, and whether fertility, disease, etc. Divination is needed to understand the will of ghosts and gods and the good or bad luck of events. The materials used for divination are mainly the plastron and carapace of tortoises and the shoulder blades of cattle. Usually, some small holes are dug or drilled on the back of the oracle bones that are to be used for divination. Such small holes are called "drilling" by oracle bone scientists. During divination, heating these small pits will cause cracks on the surface of the oracle bones. This kind of crack is called a "sign". The word "divination" in oracle bone inscriptions for divination looks like a omen. People who engage in divination judge good or bad fortune based on the various shapes of divination signs. Judging from the oracle bone inscriptions of the Yin and Shang Dynasties, the Chinese characters at that time had developed into a writing system that could be complete and in the Chinese language. In the oracle bone inscriptions of the Yin Ruins that have been discovered, the number of single words that appear has reached about 4,000. There are a large number of characters referring to things, pictographic characters, knowing characters, and many pictophonetic characters. There is a huge difference in appearance between these characters and the characters we use today. But from the perspective of word formation methods, the two are basically the same. At present, about 150,000 oracle bones and more than 4,500 single characters have been found. The contents recorded in these oracle bone inscriptions are extremely rich and involve many aspects of social life in the Shang Dynasty, including not only politics, military, culture, social customs, etc., but also science and technology such as astronomy, calendar, medicine, etc. Judging from the approximately 1,500 single characters that have been identified in oracle bone inscriptions, it already possesses the character creation methods of "pictogram, meaning, phonetic sound, reference, transfer, and pretense", demonstrating the unique charm of Chinese characters. Documents based on tortoise shells and animal bones from China's Shang Dynasty and early Western Zhou Dynasty (approximately 16th century BC to 10th century BC). It is the earliest known form of Chinese literature. The characters engraved on armor and bones were previously called deeds, oracle bone inscriptions, oracle inscriptions, tortoise edition inscriptions, Yinxu inscriptions, etc., and are now commonly known as oracle bone inscriptions. Due to superstition, the emperors of the Shang and Zhou dynasties used tortoise shells (the most common ones were tortoise shells) or animal bones (the most common ones were the ox shoulder blades) for divination. The omen results, verification status, etc.) were engraved on the oracle bones and kept as archival materials by the royal historian (see Oracle Bone Archives). In addition to the inscriptions on divination, there are also a few inscriptions on oracle bones to record events. The contents of the oracle bone documents involve astronomy, calendar, meteorology, geography, country, lineage, family, characters, officials, conquests, prisons, agriculture, animal husbandry, hunting, transportation, religion, sacrifices, diseases, fertility, disasters, etc. It is extremely precious first-hand information for studying the social history, culture, and language of ancient China, especially the Shang Dynasty. 2 Bronze inscriptions Bronze inscriptions refer to the characters engraved on the bronzes of the Yin and Zhou dynasties, also called bell and tripod inscriptions. The Shang and Zhou dynasties were the age of bronzes. The ritual vessels of bronzes were represented by tripods, and the musical instruments were represented by bells. "Zhongding" is synonymous with bronzes. Therefore, bell and tripod inscriptions or bronze inscriptions refer to the inscriptions cast or engraved on bronze vessels. The so-called bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. China had already entered the Bronze Age in the Xia Dynasty, and the smelting of copper and the manufacturing of bronze wares were very developed. Because copper was also called gold before the Zhou Dynasty, the inscriptions on the bronzes were called "jinwen" or "jinjinwen"; and because this type of bronzes had the largest number of characters on bells and tripods, they were also called "zhongdingwen" in the past. ".
The northern books are strong and the southern books are borrowed, and each is perfect, regardless of superiority or inferiority. However, Bao Shichen and Kang Youwei strongly praised the books of the two dynasties, especially the stele style of the Northern Wei Dynasty. Kang cited ten beautiful things to emphasize the advantages of Wei stele. The regular script of the Tang Dynasty was like the prosperity of the country in the Tang Dynasty, which was truly unprecedented. The style of calligraphy is mature and calligraphers emerge in large numbers. In terms of regular script, Yu Shinan, Ouyang Xun, and Chu Suiliang in the early Tang Dynasty, Yan Zhenqing in the middle Tang Dynasty, and Liu Gongquan in the late Tang Dynasty all had their regular script works valued by later generations and regarded as models for calligraphy practice. 7 Cursive Script Cursive Script: A style of writing for Chinese characters. It was formed in the Han Dynasty and evolved on the basis of official script for the convenience of writing. There are Zhangcao, Jincao and Kuangcao. There are rules to follow when making changes in Zhangcao's strokes. Representative works include the Songjiang version of Wu Huangxiang's "Jijiuzhang" of the Three Kingdoms. Jincao's writing style is informal and smooth, and his representative works include "Chu Yue" and "De Shi" written by Wang Xizhi of the Jin Dynasty. Kuangcao appeared in the Tang Dynasty, represented by Zhang Xu and Huaisu, with wild and uninhibited writing styles, and became an artistic creation that was completely divorced from practicality. From then on, cursive script was just a calligraphy work that calligraphers copied from Zhangcao, Jincao and Kuangcao. Representative works include Zhang Xu's "Belly Pain" and Huai Su's "Autobiography". Cursive script is a font created for the convenience of writing. It began in the early Han Dynasty. What was commonly used at that time was "Cao Li", that is, scrawled official script. Later, it gradually developed into a kind of "Zhang Cao" with artistic value. At the end of the Han Dynasty, Zhang Zhi changed "Zhangcao" to "Jincao", and the style of the characters was formed in one stroke. In the Tang Dynasty, Zhang Xu and Huai Su developed "Kang Cao" with continuous and convoluted strokes and numerous changes in glyphs. 8 Running script is a font between regular script and cursive script. It can be said to be the cursive version of regular script or the regular script version of cursive script. It was created to make up for the slow writing speed of regular script and the difficulty of legibility of cursive script. The writing style is not as sloppy as cursive script, nor does it require regular script to be as straight. Those with more regular script than cursive script are called "Xingkai". Those with more cursive than regular script are called "Xingcao". Running script was produced around the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty. Edit this paragraph Chinese character fonts Currently, various types of Chinese character fonts can be divided into three major types. The first category is Song fonts and Hei fonts (including thick and thin line fonts) developed from the movable type printing in the Song Dynasty; the second category is fonts evolved from calligraphy, such as regular script, imitation Song script, Xingkai, Li script, and Wei script , Shu body, Yan body, thin gold body and pen writing fonts, etc.; the third category is art fonts, such as variety show, tanning, amber, water column, etc. Most other fonts are variations of the above three types of fonts, such as: Dabiao Song, Xiaobiao Song, Bao Song, Chang Song, Zhong Song, Yao Ti, etc. that evolved from Song Ti; Da Hei and Ping Hei evolved from Hei Ti. , thick black, isoline (including thick, medium, thin and other linear fonts, and later evolved into thick, accurate, thin round fonts), etc.; Zhongkai and fine imitation Song fonts evolved from regular script, imitation Song style, etc.; Meihean evolved from Hengti and Songti; Li variant evolved from Li type, etc.