Contents

Introduction

Legends Concer ning the

Origins of Writing

Historical Evidence

of Writing

Development of the Tools

Used in Writing

Characters That

Communicate Ideas

Evolution of Written

Characters
The Chinese art of painting the word is called calligraphy. It is an ancient art, rooted

in the world of the spirit and deeply related to poetr y.

We use words to talk about the state of the heart and to communicate that which is dif?cult to

comprehend. To remember these feelings and to preserve them, we write them down.

Thus it is that through words the heart is heard, and through the painting of these words that

the heart is seen.

—Master Yang
Each painted word in this remarkable art is a series of br ush strokes on paper and

ever y stroke is the result of a direct link between the heart that feels, the eye that

sees, and the hand that holds the br ush.

Originally used to evoke responses from the gods, it has long been felt that writing

has the power not only to communicate but also to transfor m reality.
Writing can save teetering governments and weak armies; it gives voice to the dying wind of

human virtue.

—Lu Ji (261–303)
With each stroke of a br ush on paper, subtle emotions are conveyed. Thick or thin,

with force or with grace, statements are made that the practiced eye reads into

ever y character.

The sheet of paper is a battleground;

the brush: the lances and swords;

the ink: the mind, the commander-in-chief;

ability and dexterity: the deputies;

the composition: the strategy.

By grasping the brush the outcome of the battle is decided: the strokes and lines are

the commanders’ orders; the curves and returns are the mortal blows.

—Wang Xi Zhi (321–379)

Here’s how the painted word inspired Suo Jing (229–303):

Quivering like a startled phoenix,

Not yet aloft, wings spread,

Ready to rise,

It returns to a state of rest.

Insects and snakes coiled and poised:

Some advancing, others retreating,

Some fragile, soft and willowy,

Others aggressive, charging forward.

Wandering freely, this way and that,

Suddenly upright, suddenly twisted.

An outstanding steed bolts in anger,

Struggling against the bridle.

“What’s the difference between poetr y and prose?” Wang Jilang asks Wu Qiao in the

famous text Answering Wang Jilang’s Questions on Poetry. Wu Qiao answers that a writer ’s

message is like rice:

When you write in prose, you cook the rice. When you write poetry, you turn rice into rice wine.

Cooking rice doesn’t change its shape, but making it into rice wine changes both its quality and

shape. Cooked rice makes one full, so one can live out one’s life span.

Wine, on the other hand, makes one drunk—makes the sad happy and the happy sad. Its

effect is sublimely beyond explanation.

There are several Chinese legends that tell about the origin of writing.

One tells of Fu Xi, the ?rst of the ?ve emperors from a period that is now steeped

in legend. Living 5,000 years ago, Fu Xi is credited with the invention of rope, ?

shing and hunting nets, musical instr uments, and the eight trigrams. He taught men

how to use ?re, to cook food, and how to raise and tend livestock.

Fu Xi, it is said, was searching for the secrets of life. He was convinced that

ever ything was gover ned by one universal law and he devoted his life to discovering

the secret. One day as Fu Xi was meditating by the Li River, a dragon leapt out of

the water. Fu Xi noticed that the dragon had strange markings on its back and he

drew these markings in the sand in order to study them.

One day as Fu Xi was meditating by the Li River, a dragon leapt out of the water. Fu

Xi noticed that the dragon had strange markings on its back and he drew these

markings in the sand in order to study them.

Gradually Fu Xi began to realize that these markings held the clue he had been

looking for. From them he devised eight trigrams that contain the secrets of all the

various cycles of life and of changes that take place in nature and in the human spirit.

In a commentar y to The Book of Changes, one of the world’s oldest books, there is a

passage that reads as follows:

Fu Xi inspected everything under the sky. He looked upward and admired the splendid designs in

the heavens, he looked down and observed the structure of the earth. He noted the elegance in the

shapes of birds and animals and the integrity of their ways. He studied his own body and cycles

of life. He invented the eight trigrams in order to explain the changes that take place in nature

and to help mankind understand the essence of things.

Another legend concer ning the origin of Chinese writing says that writing was

created over 6,000 years ago by a court of?cial named Cang Jie. It is said that when

the idea of writing occur red to Cang Jie, ghosts appeared and started wailing,

signifying that this was world-shocking news.

 Cang Jie, like Fu Xi, studied the world around him. He was particularly taken by

shadows that fell on the ground and animal footprints that he came across. It was

while contemplating these one day that he was inspired with the idea of writing. He

scribbled a poem in the for m of pictorial images based on the shapes he saw. Having

made this incredible discover y, he apparently wept throughout the night.

These ancient legends tell us that the characters used in writing were found in

nature. They also tell us that the art of writing arose from careful obser vation and

deep contemplation.

Both Cang Jie and Fu Xi created, not by forging something new, but by carefully

examining what already existed. In the natural patter ns they obser ved, they beheld a

divine spirit. This spirit resides within the written word.

These signs were found on old bits of potter y. They date from 6000 B.C.E.
The bronze strip from which these drawings are taken was made in 2000 B.C.E. The

drawings may be an evocation to the spirit of animals that have been killed in a hunt.

The ter m “oracle bones” is used to describe the ancient remains of ox and deer

bones and tortoiseshells that were used to communicate with Heaven. Many of these

have been unearthed by far mers as they plowed their ?elds.

Speci?c questions like “Will it rain?” “Will the hunt be good?” were inscribed

onto the bones. A pointed instr ument was then heated and applied. Heaven

responded in the for m of cracks at the point of the incision. These cracks, or

auguries, were read by those who were in charge of this vital communication and

their interpretations were then recorded on the surface of the bone.

 At left is a drawing from an ancient tortoiseshell showing these divine

communications. It dates from around 1500 B.C.E. Some of the signs are still

recognizable today.

In the thousands of years that have passed since the early incisions on oracle bones

the nature of writing has changed. Now it is a person rather than Heaven that

communicates, but what issues forth is still considered to be the embodiment of

inherent tr uths.
These are examples of early Chinese images from about 1300 B.C.E. They portray

aspects of ritual sacri?ce. At the bottom of the drawing on the right you can see a

tongue, which represents wine. In the middle is a symbol for cooked meat (a hand

with smoke rising) and on the top is a man with two strings of shells that represent

an offering of money.

This drawing is a more stylized version of “a man with money.”

This symbol for sacri?ce includes a picture of a ?sh that represents fresh meat.

Here a man presents his son to his ancestors through the pillars of a temple.
Early writing tools were wooden sticks, shells, and pointed stones. We ?nd remnants

of their marks on early ceramics, on bones, and on bronze artifacts. Over many

centuries various for ms of plant material were developed to make silk and paper.

Along with these early developments, more and more complex tools with which to

write appeared.

On a bronze sculpture from approximately 1500 B.C.E. there is a picture of a cup-

shaped container attached to one end of a hallow straw. The straw deposited colored

liquid from the cup onto strips of bamboo.

This straw and its cup was an early pen.

Br ushes with tips of vegetable ?ber were developed by 200 B.C.E. These br ushes

worked more quickly than a pen, but were rigid and gave a thick square line. The ?

ber tip was eventually replaced with a leather one, which was softer and more ?

exible. It was a man named Meng-t’ien who really changed things.

He replaced the leather tip with a tuft of soft animal hair, making it possible to

create lines of var ying intensity. Meng-t’ien maintained that this new br ush could

create ever y sort of effect when placed in a skillful hand—ever ything from a thin,

threadlike line to a thick one, from a full rich stroke to a broken fading one, from a

squared line to a rounded one.

The development of Meng-t’ien’s br ush marked the birth of calligraphy. Writing

began to appear alongside paintings. It was treated with the same honor and dignity

accorded to art.
 Along with development of paper came the invention of ink. India ink is actually a

Chinese creation. Soot is mixed into a paste with glue and is perfumed with

camphor and musk. The paste is then shaped into tablets or small sticks.

When the time comes to use the ink, it is mixed on an ink stone that has two wells

hollowed out on its surface. One of these wells is a container for water. In the other,

larger well, the ink tablet is r ubbed to produce a ?ne black powder. The powder is

then diluted with water. By skillfully mixing the powder with the water, a good

calligrapher can obtain the shades known to the Chinese as “the ?ve shades of black.”
Like all writing, Chinese characters communicate ideas. However, unlike the

alphabet we use in the West, which uses signs to symbolize the sounds in a word,

Chinese characters use signs that symbolize the ideas themselves. Writing in Chinese

is not the laying out of a series of sounds that we experience as we write our

sentences, but rather it is the art of painting ideas.

The classical dictionar y of the Chinese language includes 40,000 characters

grouped under 214 radicals. A radical is the underlying concept of a character. These

are concepts such as sun, moon, mountain, wind, man, woman, child. Two or more

radicals are combined to express more complex ideas. Thus the radicals for “sun”

and “moon” are combined to express the idea of brightness. The radical for “paint

br ush” is combined with the radicals for “mouth” and “word” to depict a book.

“Hand” and “container ” expresses “to car r y.”

PICTOGRAPHS

Some characters are ver y descriptive and easy to read like those opposite. These are

called pictographs.
IDEOGRAMS

Many characters combine two or more pictographs to for m an ideogram. In the

example here, sun and moon are combined to express the idea of brightness.
LOAN CHARACTERS

Loan characters express ideas bor rowed from the meanings or sounds of other words.

The character for “ten thousand” is derived from the concept of the many legs on a

scorpion, while the word for “west” derives from a word with a similarity of sounds

like “bird in a nest.”

Early drawings were ver y descriptive and easy to read. As different tools were used

these drawings took on different shapes. They also acquired additional meanings and

subtleties as they were used in different contexts over time.

The following pages show the evolution of a few important radicals.

RAIN

The idea behind the radical for rain is that of drops falling out of a cloud. This

radical has changed ver y little over time.

TO FLY

Early drawings represent the word “?y” with a picture of a crane taking off with its

long neck unfolding. The pro?le was later altered to show the bird in ?ight with

open wings.
TO GIVE BIRTH

The earth gives birth to ever ything. Thus the drawing of a plant shooting up out of

the earth toward the sunlight depicts the idea of being bor n, of growing, and of

giving birth.
FISH

The ?rst drawings of the word for ?sh portrayed the scales of its body. Over time, the

head was added. The tail was reduced to four small strokes which also indicate the

tongues of a ?ame—accentuating the Chinese idea that the ?sh is a symbol of riches

and abundance.
MOON

Early pictures of the Moon show it as a feminine symbol rising into the sky. Later on,

the Moon came to be represented as the crescent, slowly tur ning toward Earth.
HAND

In the early drawing the shape of the hand with its ?ngers is ver y easy to see. Over

time the drawings appear to show the palm rather than the ?ngers.
PAINT BRUSH

The character for paint br ush evolved from the drawing of a hand grasping a stylus.
WIND

The ancient Chinese believed that insects were bor n as a result of the meeting of the

wind with earthly vapors. Early pictures of the wind portray this.
RICE

This character shows the rice that has been separated from the husk. The original

symbol shows nine grains, a sign of abundance. Later pictures depict the threshing

process by which the seeds are separated.

Bird
The animal world is divided into ?ve families: feathered, fur r y, naked, scaly, and

shell-bearing. The feathered family is further divided into short-tailed and long-tailed

ones. This character represents the long-tailed bird.

 acknowledgments
Page 9: Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, SMBPK, Berlin.

Page 10: Taipeh Palace Museum, Taipeh.

Page 12: Collection of J.E.V.M. Kingado, USA.

Page 15: Asian Art Museum, San Francisco.

Page 17: Private Collection.

Pages 18, 25, 60: British Museum, London.

Page 21: National Galler y, Prague.

Page 22: Hiraki Ukiyo-E Museum, Yokohama.

Pages 27, 28: Peking Museum, Peking.

Page 35: Collection of the Shanghai Museum, Shanghai.

Page 39: Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde, Munich.

Page 42: Museum Rietberg, Zurich.

Page 47: Shanghai Museum, Shangai.

Page 48: Rheinisches Bildarchiv, Cologne.

Page 50: Fukuoka Collection, Kanawa.

Drawings: Jeannine Jourdan

 Copyright © 2002 by The
Chinese Characters: The Art of Painting the Word

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