Pictures of several ways of writing Chinese characters: cursive script, regular script, etc.
Introduction to cursive script:
Cursive script is a font of Chinese characters, with two meanings: broad and narrow. . Broadly speaking, regardless of age, all scrawled words are counted as cursive writing. In a narrow sense, that is, as a specific font, it was formed in the Han Dynasty and evolved on the basis of official script for the convenience of writing.
About the Eastern Jin Dynasty, in order to distinguish it from the new cursive script at that time. The cursive script of the Han Dynasty is called Zhangcao. The new cursive script is relatively called Jincao, which is divided into big grass (also called crazy grass) and small grass. It feels beautiful in the madness. As Li Zhimin said: "Be present in the pond, learn from the principles, learn from things, get from the heart, understand from the image, and then enter the wonderful realm of cursive script."
Because the glyphs of cursive script are too simple, they are easily confused with each other. , so it cannot replace official script and become the main font, just like official script replaced seal script.
The provinces and changes in Zhangcao's strokes have rules and regulations to follow. Representative works such as 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, becoming 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. Kuangcao's representative works, such as "Belly Pain" by Zhang Xu of the Tang Dynasty and "Autobiography" by Huai Su, are all extant treasures.
The early cursive script broke the rules and strict rules of official script and was a hasty writing method. It's called "Zhangcao". Zhangcao is an elegant cursive style that combines early cursive script and Han official script. It has distinct waves, the strokes are connected in a "wave" shape, the characters are independent, the characters are all square, and the strokes are horizontal. Zhangcao was most popular during the Han and Wei dynasties. It was revived in the Yuan Dynasty and transformed into the Ming Dynasty.
At the end of the Han Dynasty, Zhangcao was further "cursed", removing the traces of official script strokes and making the upper and lower characters interconnected. The radicals were also simplified and borrowed from each other, which was called "Jincao".
Jincao evolved from Zhangcao's elimination of waves and challenges. Jincao style has been popular since the Wei and Jin Dynasties. In the Tang Dynasty, Jincao was written more indulgently, with continuous and sweeping strokes and various character shapes, which was called "Kangcao", also known as Dacao.