Historical records show that Chinese characters have a history of more than 3,000 years. However, as archaeologists have discovered, China’s writing history is more than three thousand years old. The existence of writing is the progress of history. In the long river of history, as dynasties change, writing is constantly being improved and simplified. The bear symbol evolved into Today's formal fonts are the Chinese characters that people now use. The earliest calligraphy book is "Shuowen Jiezi" compiled by Xu Shen of the Eastern Han Dynasty, which contains 9353 Chinese characters.
In the middle and late Shang Dynasty, oracle bone inscriptions appeared in large numbers, and more than 4,000 characters evolved into Chinese characters, marking the maturity of Chinese characters. Oracle bone inscriptions were discovered more than a hundred years ago during the reign of Emperor Guangxu of the Qing Dynasty. Wang Yirong, the king of Guo Zijian, fell seriously ill and sought medical treatment everywhere. He accidentally discovered a tortoise shell with characters engraved on it among the medicinal materials. Oracle bone inscriptions are mainly used for divination and fortune-telling and recording the results of divination. This discovery is of great value to historical civilization and is also the beginning of the evolution of Chinese characters. Oracle bone inscriptions are valued by many scholars, antique dealers and collectors.
From the oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty to today’s regular script, the form of Chinese characters has gradually evolved. This evolution can be divided into two major stages, one is the ancient Chinese character stage, and the other is the official script and regular script stage. From the previous stage From the Shang Dynasty to the Qin Dynasty, the fonts included oracle bone inscriptions, bronze inscriptions, large seal script and small seal script. The latter stage continued from the Han Dynasty to modern times. The fonts included official script, cursive script, running script and regular script. The difference between the two stages is the transformation from small seal script to official script. .
Different fonts that appeared in each historical period have their own distinct artistic characteristics. Seal script is simple and elegant, official script is thick and square, cursive script is hearty and smooth, regular script is beautiful and neat, and running script is free and easy to write. Various font styles are diverse. Different personalities. These unique physical structures have given rise to new artistic creations, tracing the footsteps of the development of Chinese characters. We can clearly see that they are in sync with the development of society and can also reflect the spiritual outlook of each era.