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 Chinese Symbols & Culture |
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Home Chinese Symbols |
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| Chinese Symbols |
The history of Chinese Symbols
The Chinese symbol, also known as Chinese character or Han character are one of the oldest known written symbols in the world. The evolvement of Chinese symbols have been though three stages, they are Oracle Bone and Bronze Inscriptions, bamboo Inscriptions and Modern Chinese Writings.
Oracle Bone and Bronze Inscriptions
The earliest Chinese symbols were carved by the Chinese ancients of the Shang Dynasty (1200–1050 BC) on tortoise shells and ox scapula (shoulder blades), also known as Oracle Bone Inscriptions (Jiaguwen) which were found at the site of the last Shang capital near present-day Anyang, Henan province. On the oracle bone inscriptions, one finds many pictographs in their primitive picture forms. The earliest symbols were pictographic, in that they resemble stylized drawings of objects they represent.The pictographs, the earliest forms of Chinese written symbols, already possessed the characteristics of a script. As is well- known, written Chinese is not an alphabetic language, but a script of ideograms.
Another type of early Chinese symbols in its long history of development is Bronze Inscriptions (Jinwen). These are texts either cast into bronze vessels or carved into the surface of an already carved vessel. These vessels became widely used during the Eastern Zhou dynasty (ca. 1150-771 BC) but there are examples from late Shang as well. The ancient bronze inscription may well be regarded as “books in Brozne” which fill important gaps left by the scanty written history of that remote.
Bamboo Inscriptions
The next stage in the history of Chinese symbols was the Bamboo Inscriptions. The practice of writing on Bamboo slips began probably from the Shang Dynasty to the Eastern Han, extending over a period of 1,700 years. Chinese symbols were written with a writing brush and black ink, with one line on each slip. Writing on wood slips was done from top to bottom, with each line comprising from 10 to at most 40 symbols. At that time, a book was formed when all slips bearing all lines of an article were joined together. Many important and famous ancient Chinese books were written on Bamboo slips. Such as the Analects of Confucius, Book of Rites and so on. Bamboo books held an important position in Chinese cultural and history. bamboo slips gave way to paper documents after paper was invented and used for writing. Bamboo slips were the earliest form of "books" that carried valuable history records.
Modern Chinese Writings
The two main Chinese writing systems in use today are the traditional and simplified Chinese Symbols. The former is only used in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macao and Chinese speaking communities (except Singapore and Malaysia) outside mainland China, takes its form from standardized character forms dating back to the late Han dynasty. The simplified Chinese symbols in use today are the result of the works moderated by Chinese Government in 1950s. Simplified symbols were created by decreasing the number of strokes and simplifying the forms of a sizable proportion of traditional symbols. Not all symbols were given a new simplified form, as these unsimplified characters were already very "simple" and involve very few strokes. some simplified symbols are very dissimilar to and unpredictable from traditional counterparts. Finally, many symbols were left untouched by simplification, and are thus identical between the traditional and simplified Chinese symbols. |
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