Chinese Language Museum

History of the Development of Chinese Writing

Chinese Characters with An Unbroken Lineage

With global scripts as the background, Chinese characters as the focus, and ethnic minority characters as a significant component, our museum gathers the essence of Chinese character samples from various dynasties, explaining the structural features and evolution process of Chinese characters.

Exhibition location: Xuanwen Pavilion of the National Museum of Chinese Writing

Exhibition Hall 1

Calligraphy Inspired by the Way of the Nature

The origins of Chinese characters in China are subject to two interpretations, one is the ancient mythological legend of Cangjie creating characters, and the other is a scientific description of the origin of writing. Inspired by the footprints of birds and beasts, Cangjie is said to have created numerous pictographic characters that became widely used by people. In fact, the story of Cangjie inventing characters is just a myth, and there is still debate in the academic community about his existence.

Oracle Bone Chronicles

A tortoise plastron unearthed at the Jiahu Site in Wuyang, Henan Province that dates back over 8000 years, featuring a carved symbol resembling the modern numerical symbol "eight” is attributed to the early Peiligang culture. This is one of the earliest depiction symbols discovered in China, and some scholars believe that it has a certain connection to the origin of Chinese characters.

Exhibition Hall 2

Timeless Ancient Texts

The Zuoce Xiong Tripod Cauldron(Ding), unearthed from the Yin Ruins in Anyang, Henan Province, stands 22.1cm in height, 15.7cm in rim diameter, and 16cm in the belly. The inscriptions read “Zuoce Xiong”. At that time, “Zuoce”, or bookmaking, was a title for the official historian. The second inscription, “Ce” , represents bamboo slips tied with strings, indicating the compilation of records. The last character, “Xiong” is the name of the historian. The bronze’s unique shape resembles three elephant heads connected, with legs like elephant trunks, adorned with a pattern of connected beads and three animal faces engraved on the belly.

Vessels Carrying Text

Hu, a kind of pear-shaped bronze container, was mostly used to hold wine or water and was popular from the Shang to the Han dynasty. While it is extremely rare to find pairs of Western Zhou bronze pots in China today, the Jia Bo Hu are not only paired, but also intact with graceful outlines and elaborate decorations, and are among the best-preserved late Western Zhou bronzes. An inscription of 33 characters across 8 lines on the rim of the lid confirms that the lord of the Jia state was “Jia Bo”, as recorded in “Zuo Zhuan”(The Commentary of Zuo), highlighting its great historical value.

Exhibition Hall 3

Standardization of Writing

During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, the writing system was diverse and complex, forming the five major writing systems of Qi, Yan, Jin, Chu, and Qin. Except for the Qin script, which largely inherited the characteristics of the Shang and Zhou scripts, the other four systems of scripts have strong regional characteristics, necessitating unification. In 221 BCE, Emperor Qin Shi Huang unified the six states and established the first unified empire in Chinese history - the Qin Dynasty. He commissioned Li Si, Zhao Gao, Hu Wujing and others to regulate the script, adopting the simplified “Xiao Zhuan(Small Seal)” script as the national standard.

From Clerical Script to Regular Script

Over the four hundred years of the Han dynasty, Chinese script evolved from Zhou Seal script to Clerical script, and from Clerical to Cursive, Regular, and Running scripts. By the end of the Han Dynasty, the major script types were established. The continuous evolution of script during the Han and Wei dynasties paved the way for the flourishing development of Chinese calligraphy art, with the Han dynasty marking the peak of using bamboo slips and silk manuscripts which were not only widely discovered across regions and in large quantities but also rich in content and diverse in styles. This fully reflected that Clerical script had standardized its own structural patterns from Qin Clerical script, forming a mature style, and also reflected the evolution process of Chinese characters from Clerical Script to Regular Script.

Words and Meanings

The study of Chinese characters began with Xu Shen, a renowned scholar of classics and philology during the Eastern Han Dynasty. He had a fondness for calligraphy from a young age and was especially good at the Small Seal script. He developed a keen interest in the origins of ancient characters alongside his calligraphy, so he devoted himself to studying ancient Chinese characters and finally wrote the book “Shuowen Jiezi”, or Explaining Graphs and Analyzing Characters, the first systematic study and explanation of ancient Chinese characters.

Exhibition Hall 4

Gathering Literary Splendors

China, a multi-ethnic country with the richest variety of scripts in the world, saw nearly 40 ethnic minority scripts from ancient times to the late 19th century. Based on the time of creation, scope of use, and development, these scripts are categorized into ancient ethnic scripts, traditional ethnic scripts, and newly created and modified ethnic scripts.

Inheriting from the Past and Passing It on

Ancient ethnic script refers to the ethnic script created in China or transmitted from outside of China in ancient history. These scripts were used in specific historical periods and played varying roles before gradually disappearing due to the division and integration of the ethnic groups using them.

Innovation and Development

After the 1950s, the government assisted in creating and improving some minority scripts. These 17 scripts included newly created Zhuang, Buyi, Qiang, etc. After the liberation, in accordance with the central government's instructions to help script-less ethnic groups develop their writing systems, linguists and Zhuang language workers conducted extensive investigation and research work, and their work results were approved as official scripts by the State Council in 1957.

Exhibition Hall 5

The Origin of Printing

Printing, one of the Four Great Inventions in ancient China, evolved through woodblock printing and movable type printing stages. Its invention transformed manual copying into mechanical copying, revolutionizing book production and reducing the cost of acquiring knowledge and information. It profoundly impacted the development and inheritance of Chinese culture, as well as the dissemination and exchange of world culture.

Engraved Block Printing

Engraved block printing has played a significant role in the dissemination of culture, but there are also obvious drawbacks: firstly, engraving is time-consuming, labor-intensive, and material-intensive; Secondly, it is inconvenient to store large volumes of plates; Thirdly, it is not easy to correct typos. During the Northern Song Dynasty, Bi Sheng invented movable type printing, which improved these shortcomings.

Evolution of Movable Type

In 1450, Johannes Gutenberg from Germany invented lead alloy movable type based on Chinese movable type technology. In the early 19th century, lead typesetting technology was introduced to China and was well-received by local printing workers who designed and manufactured various typefaces of lead movable type fonts according to the characteristics of Chinese characters. Initially, the typefaces were mostly in Song style, followed by Regular, Imitation Song, and Boldface.

Inputting Chinese characters into Computers

“Writing” Chinese characters on the keyboard is a dream for many people. Since the 1950s, many scholars at home and abroad have found, through years of research and practice, that it is feasible to input Chinese characters using a keyboard based on form and phonetic features. By the late 1970s, China had developed a series of national standards and regulations for Chinese character information processing, standardizing the encoding of Chinese characters.