Survey 1- 141 – Natasha Lee

Originally Posted September 30, 2020

Centuries-Old Chinese Calligraphy

Born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia from second-generation parents, I may be Chinese ethnically, but my knowledge of this country is slim. While I have never learned very much about China in Western-oriented schools, I have always jumped on the opportunity to learn more about my ancestor’s homeland. Therefore, when we learned about the history of art in Asia in my Survey Design class, I immediately knew that I would love to look more into this area.

As touched upon in the Survey 1 lessons, The Chinese were the first to develop written characters in ancient Asia between 1400-1200 B.C, not too long after the very first invention of writing by the Sumerians in 3500-3200 B.C. Similar to hieroglyphs, Chinese characters were inspired by nature and originally formed to resemble pictures of their representative objects. We can still see the origins of these words today in the modern Chinese language through characters like the sun, moon, and mountains.

https://www.reddit.com/r/etymology/comments/da2cs3/evolution_of_chinese_characters/ (Chat showing the evolution of pictures to characters)

During this time, Chinese calligraphy was regarded as the highest form of art. Similar to painting, calligraphy was performed with a brush and had a heavy emphasis on the precision of characters and motion in the strokes. Today, traditional calligraphy is considered to be a form of fine art in China and is practiced widely around the country. While the first records of Chinese calligraphy were found around 1400 B.C, the writing was not introduced to the masses until the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. to 220 A.D). This was only possible thanks to the invention of paper in China around 105 A.D. Paper helped to make literature and written works much easier to transport and to spread among the common folk.

https://www.comuseum.com/painting/ (Artwork featuring a woman writing or painting)

Today, Chinese is spoken by over 1.6 billion people in the world, about 16% of the total population, and this number shows no sign of stopping. While the written language has gone through numerous transformations over the years, it is quite amazing to learn that most symbols and characters have stayed very close to the original.