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A Chinese character or Han character (simplified Chinese: 汉字; traditional Chinese: 漢字; pinyin: Hànzì) is a logogram used in writing Chinese, Japanese, rarely Korean, and formerly Vietnamese. Technical note: Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... Traditional Chinese (Traditional Chinese: 正體字/繁體字, Simplified Chinese: 正体字/繁体字) refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana Manyōgana Uses Furigana Okurigana Rōmaji   ) are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana (平仮名), katakana (片仮名), and the Arabic numerals. ... Korean writing systems Hangul Hanja Hyangchal Gugyeol Idu Mixed script Korean romanization Revised Romanization of Korean McCune-Reischauer Yale Romanization Hanja is the Korean name for Chinese characters. ... Hán tá»± (漢字, lit. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Simplified Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: or ; traditional Chinese: or ; pinyin: or ) is one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. ... Map of eastern China and Taiwan, showing the historic distribution of Mandarin Chinese in light brown. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Image File history File links Zh-han4zi4. ... Min (Chinese: ; pinyin: ; POJ: Bân hong-giân; BUC: Mìng huŏng-ngiòng) is a general term for a group of dialects of the Chinese language spoken in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian as well as by migrants from this province in Guangdong (around Chaozhou-Swatou... Mǐn N n (Chinese: 閩南語), also spelt as Minnan or Min-nan; native name B ; literally means Southern Min or Southern Fujian and refers to the local language/dialect of southern Fujian province, China. ... Technical note: Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... The Teochew dialect (Diō-jiu-oē, Chinese:潮州话, Hanyu Pinyin: Cháozhōuhuà, Teochiu or Tiuchiu), is a Chinese language and dialect of Minnan spoken in a region of eastern Guangdong refered to as Chaoshan. ... Guangdong Romanization refers to the four romanization schemes published by the Guangdong Provincial Education Department in 1960 for transliterating the Standard Cantonese, Teochew, Hakka, and Hainanese spoken varieties of Chinese. ... Wu (Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Chinese: ; pinyin: ) is one of the major divisions of the Chinese language. ... Shanghainese (上海言话 [] in Shanghainese), sometimes referred to as the Shanghai dialect, is a dialect of Wu Chinese spoken in the city of Shanghai. ... Northern Wu Romanization Scheme. ... This article is about all of the Cantonese (Yue) dialects. ... Jyutping (sometimes spelled Jyutpin) is a romanization system for Standard Cantonese developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK) in 1993. ... Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana Manyōgana Uses Furigana Okurigana Rōmaji   ) are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana (平仮名), katakana (片仮名), and the Arabic numerals. ... Hiragana ) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana and kanji; the Latin alphabet is also used in some cases. ... Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana Manyōgana Uses Furigana Okurigana Rōmaji The Hepburn romanization system ) is named after James Curtis Hepburn, who used it to transcribe the sounds of the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet in the third edition of his Japanese–English dictionary, published... Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Romaji ローマ字 Kunrei-shiki (訓令式, Cabinet-ordered system) is a romanization system, that is, a system for transcribing the Japanese language into the Roman alphabet. ... Jamo redirects here. ... Korean writing systems Hangul Hanja Hyangchal Gugyeol Idu Mixed script Korean romanization Revised Romanization of Korean McCune-Reischauer Yale Romanization Hanja is the Korean name for Chinese characters. ... The Revised Romanization of Korean is the official Korean language romanization system in South Korea. ... McCune-Reischauer romanization is one of the two most widely used Korean language romanization systems, along with the Revised Romanization of Korean, which replaced (a modified) McCune-Reischauer as the official romanization system in South Korea in 2000. ... The Vietnamese alphabet has the following 29 letters, in collating order: Vietnamese also uses the 10 digraphs and 1 trigraph below. ... Hán tá»± (漢字, lit. ... A Chinese logogram A logogram, or logograph, is a single written character which represents a word or a morpheme (a meaningful unit of language). ... Oracle bone script (Chinese: 甲骨文; Hanyu Pinyin: ; literally shell bone writing) refers to incised (or, rarely, brush-written) ancient Chinese characters found on oracle bones, which are animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in ancient China. ... ISO 15924, Codes for the representation of names of scripts, defines two sets of codes for a number of writing systems (scripts). ... The Unicode Standard, Version 5. ... Areas using only Chinese characters in green; in conjunction with other scripts, dark green; maximum extent of historic usage, light green. ... Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Variant Chinese characters are Chinese characters that can be used interchangeably. ... Simplified Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: or ; traditional Chinese: or ; pinyin: or ) is one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. ... The second round of Chinese character simplification was officially promulgated on December 20, 1977 by the Peoples Republic of China, and replaced the existing (first round) simplified Chinese characters that were already in use. ... The Traditional Chinese characters versus Simplified Chinese characters debate (繁簡之爭, more recently: 正簡之爭) has existed for a long time among Chinese users. ... Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana Manyōgana Uses Furigana Okurigana Rōmaji   ) are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana (平仮名), katakana (片仮名), and the Arabic numerals. ... It has been suggested that Shakukun be merged into this article or section. ... Korean writing systems Hangul Hanja Hyangchal Gugyeol Idu Mixed script Korean romanization Revised Romanization of Korean McCune-Reischauer Yale Romanization Hanja is the Korean name for Chinese characters. ... Idu munja is an archaic writing system which represents the Korean language using hanja. ... Hán tá»± (漢字, lit. ... Chữ nôm (𡦂喃 lit. ... Japanese name Kanji: Hiragana: Korean name Hangul: Hanja: Vietnamese name Quốc ngữ: Hán tá»±: The art of calligraphy is widely practiced and revered in the East Asian civilizations that use Chinese characters. ... Oracle bone script (Chinese: 甲骨文; Hanyu Pinyin: ; literally shell bone writing) refers to incised (or, rarely, brush-written) ancient Chinese characters found on oracle bones, which are animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in ancient China. ... Left: Bronze fang zun ritual wine container dated c. ... 《尋隱者不遇》—賈島 松下問童子 言師採藥去 隻在此山中 雲深不知處 Seeking the Master but not Meeting by Jia Dao Beneath a pine I asked a little child. ... The clerical script or chancery script (Traditional Chinese: ; Simplified Chinese: ; pinyin: lìshu; Japanese: 隸書体, Reishotai;) is an archaic style of Chinese calligraphy which, due to its high legibility to modern readers, is still being used for artistic flavor in a variety of functional applications such as headlines, signboards and advertisements. ... Sheng Jiao Xu by Chu Suiliang: calligraphy of the Kaishu style The Regular Script, or in Chinese Kaishu (楷書 Pinyin: kÇŽishÅ«) and Japanese Kaisho, also commonly known as Standard Regular (正楷), is the newest of the Chinese calligraphy styles (peaked at the 7th century), hence most common in modern writings and... Japanese name Kanji: Kana: Korean name Hangul: Hanja: Semi-cursive script is a partially cursive style of Chinese calligraphy. ... Chinese characters of Cursive Script in regular script (left) and cursive script (right). ... Since the Chinese language uses a logographic script — that is, a script where one or two characters corresponds roughly to one word or meaning — there are vastly more characters, or glyphs, than there are keys on a standard computer keyboard. ... Simplified Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: or ; traditional Chinese: or ; pinyin: or ) is one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. ... Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Egyptian hieroglyphs, which have their origins as logograms. ...

The number of Chinese characters contained in the Kangxi dictionary is approximately 47,035, although a large number of these are rarely used variants accumulated throughout history. Studies carried out in China have shown that full literacy requires a knowledge of between three and four thousand characters.^[1] The Kangxi Dictionary The Kangxi Dictionary (Chinese: 康熙字典; Pinyin: Kāngxī Zìdiǎn; Wade-Giles: Kang-hsi tzu-tien) was the standard Chinese character dictionary during the 18th and 19th centuries. ...

In the Chinese writing system, each character corresponds to a single spoken syllable. A majority of words in all modern varieties of Chinese are poly-syllabic and thus require two or more characters to write. Cognates in the various Chinese languages/dialects which have the same or similar meaning but different pronunciations can be written with the same character. In addition, many Chinese characters were adopted according to their meaning by the Japanese and Korean languages to represent native words, disregarding pronunciation altogether. For other uses, see Word (disambiguation). ... Look up cognate in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Chinese characters are also known as sinographs, and the Chinese writing system as sinography. Non-Chinese languages which have adopted sinography — and, with the orthography, a large number of loanwords from the Chinese language — are known as Sinoxenic languages, whether or not they still use the characters. The term does not imply any genetic affiliation with Chinese. The major Sinoxenic languages are generally considered to be Japanese and Vietnamese. It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Sinograph. ...

History

Precursors

Main articles: Neolithic signs in China and Oracle bone script

Left: Bronze 方樽 fāngzūn ritual wine container dated about 1000 BCE. The written inscription cast in bronze on the vessel commemorates a gift of cowrie shells (then used as currency in China) from someone of presumably elite status in 周 Zhōu Dynasty society. Right: Bronze 方彝 fāngyí ritual container dated about 1000 BCE. A written inscription of some 180 Chinese characters appears twice on the vessel. The written inscription comments on state rituals that accompanied court ceremony, recorded by an official scribe.

In the 1970s, Neolithic proto-writing was discovered that may be ancestral to the Oracle Bone Script. At Damaidi in Ningxia, 3,172 cliff carvings dating to 6000–5000 BC have been discovered "featuring 8453 individual characters such as the sun, moon, stars, gods and scenes of hunting or grazing." These pictographs have been deemed comparable to the early characters of the Bronze Age.^[2] Areas using only Chinese characters in green; in conjunction with other scripts, dark green; maximum extent of historic usage, light green. ... Oracle bone script (Chinese: 甲骨文; Hanyu Pinyin: ; literally shell bone writing) refers to incised (or, rarely, brush-written) ancient Chinese characters found on oracle bones, which are animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in ancient China. ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 800 × 513 pixelsFull resolution (1965 × 1260 pixel, file size: 382 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) (All user names refer to en. ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 800 × 513 pixelsFull resolution (1965 × 1260 pixel, file size: 382 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) (All user names refer to en. ... Left: Bronze fang zun ritual wine container dated c. ... This article is about the ancient Chinese dynasty. ... Year 1970 (MCMLXX) was a common year starting on Thursday (link shows full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Writing systems evolved in the 4th millennium BC out of neolithic proto-writing. ... Damaidi (大麥地) is a small village in China located in Zhongwei County in Ningxia, among the Weining Mountains on the north bend of the Yellow River. ... Ningxia (Simplified Chinese: 宁夏; Traditional Chinese: 寧夏; Pinyin: Níngxià; Wade-Giles: Ning-hsia; Postal Pinyin: Ningsia), full name Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region (Simplified Chinese: 宁夏回族自治区; Traditional Chinese: 寧夏回族自治區; Pinyin: Níngxià Huízú ZìzhìqÅ«), is a Hui autonomous region of the Peoples Republic of China, located on the northwest Loess...

Although the earliest forms of primitive Chinese writing are no more than individual symbols and therefore cannot be considered a true written script, the inscriptions found on bones (dated to 2500–1900 BC) used for the purposes of divination from the late Neolithic Longshan (simplified Chinese: 龙山; traditional Chinese: 龍山; pinyin: lóngshān) culture (c. 3200–1900 BC) are identified by some to as proto-writing. It is possible that these inscriptions are ancestral to the later Oracle bone script of the Shang Dynasty and therefore the modern Chinese script, since late Neolithic culture found in Longshan is widely accepted by historians and archaeologists to be ancestral to the Bronze Age Erlitou culture and the later Shang and Zhou dynasties. Longshan culture (龍山文化) was a late Neolithic culture centered around the central and lower Yellow River in China. ... Simplified Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: or ; traditional Chinese: or ; pinyin: or ) is one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. ... Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Oracle bone script (Chinese: 甲骨文; Hanyu Pinyin: ; literally shell bone writing) refers to incised (or, rarely, brush-written) ancient Chinese characters found on oracle bones, which are animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in ancient China. ... The Erlitou culture (二里頭文化) (1900 BC to 1500 BC) is a name given by archaeologists to an Early Bronze Age society that existed in China. ... Shang Dynasty (Chinese: 商朝) or Yin Dynasty (殷代) (1600 BC - 1046 BC) followed the legendary Xia Dynasty and preceded the Zhou Dynasty (1122 BC - 256 BC) in China. ... Zhou refers to Zhou Dynasty (1122 BC - 256 BC) or Zhou state Zhou Dynasty (690 AD - 705 AD) Zhou (political division) — Zhou is the name of a political/administrative division of China. ...

The oldest Chinese inscriptions that are indisputably writing are the Oracle bone script (Chinese: 甲骨文; pinyin: jiǎgǔwén; literally "shell-bone-script"). The oracle bone script is a well-developed writing system, attested from the late Shang Dynasty (1200–1050 BC).^[3][4][5][6] However, as the symbols used are predominantly pictographs, the linkages to the modern Chinese writing system would be decipherable only to linguistic archaeologists. The oracle bone inscriptions were discovered at what is now called the Yin Ruins near Anyang city in 1899. Oracle bone script (Chinese: 甲骨文; Hanyu Pinyin: ; literally shell bone writing) refers to incised (or, rarely, brush-written) ancient Chinese characters found on oracle bones, which are animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in ancient China. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Remnants of advanced, stratified societies dating back to the Shang period have been found in the Yellow River Valley. ... Replica of an oracle bone -- turtle shell Replica of an oracle bone -- ox scapula Oracle bones (甲骨片 pinyin: jiÇŽgÇ”piàn) are pieces of bone or turtle shell used in royal divination in the mid Shang to early Zhou dynasties in ancient China, and often bearing written inscriptions in what... Anyang (Simplified Chinese: 安阳, Traditional Chinese: 安陽; pinyin: Ä€nyáng) is a prefecture-level city in Henan province, Peoples Republic of China. ...

Legendary origins

According to legend, Chinese characters were by Cangjie (c. 2650 BC), a bureaucrat under the legendary emperor, Huangdi. The legend tells that Cangjie was hunting on Mount Yangxu (today Shanxi) when he saw a tortoise whose veins caught his curiosity. Inspired by the possibility of a logical relation of those veins, he studied the animals of the world, the landscape of the earth, and the stars in the sky, and invented a symbolic system called zì — Chinese characters. It was said that on the day the characters were born, Chinese heard the devil mourning, and saw crops falling like rain, as it marked the beginning of civilization, for good and for bad. Portrait of Cangjie showing his four eyes and eight pupils Cang Jie(Traditional Chinese: 倉頡; Simplified Chinese: 仓颉, Pinyin: cāng jié), is a legendary figure in ancient China, claimed to be an official historian of the Yellow Emperor and the inventor of the Chinese characters. ... Yellow Emperor The Yellow Emperor or Huang Di (Traditional Chinese: , Simplified Chinese: , pinyin: huángdì) is a legendary Chinese sovereign and cultural hero who is said to be the ancestor of all Han Chinese. ... Shanxi (Chinese: 山西; Hanyu Pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Shan-hsi; Postal System Pinyin: Shansi) is a province in the northern part of the Peoples Republic of China. ...

Iron Age to medieval

Further information: Traditional Chinese character

The Seal script evolved out of the Zhōu dynasty script (see bronze script), arising in the Warring State of Qin. Seal script became standardized and adopted as the formal script for all of China in the Qin dynasty, and was still widely used for decorative engraving and seals (name chops, or signets) in the Han dynasty. The Semi-cursive script develops as a variant of the clerical script in the early centuries AD. Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... 《尋隱者不遇》—賈島 松下問童子 言師採藥去 隻在此山中 雲深不知處 Seeking the Master but not Meeting by Jia Dao Beneath a pine I asked a little child. ... This article is about the ancient Chinese dynasty. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Alternative meaning: Warring States Period (Japan) The Warring States Period (traditional Chinese: 戰國時代, simplified Chinese: 战国时代 pinyin Zhànguó Shídài) takes place from sometime in the 5th century BC to the unification of China by Qin in 221 BC. It is nominally considered to be the second part of the Eastern... Qin or Chin (Wade-Giles) (秦), pronounced something like Shin, (778 BC-207 BC) was a state during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods of China. ... Qin Dynasty in 210 BC Capital Xianyang Language(s) Chinese Government Monarchy History  - Unification of China 221 BC  - Death of Qin Shi Huangdi 210 BC  - Surrender to Liu Bang 206 BC The Qin Dynasty (Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Chin Chao) (221 BC - 206 BC) was preceded by the... This article is about the authentication means. ... Han Dynasty in 87 BC Capital Changan (202 BC–9 AD) Luoyang (25 AD–190 AD) Language(s) Chinese Religion Taoism, Confucianism Government Monarchy History  - Establishment 206 BC  - Battle of Gaixia; Han rule of China begins 202 BC  - Interruption of Han rule 9 - 24  - Abdication to Cao Wei 220... Japanese name Kanji: Kana: Korean name Hangul: Hanja: Semi-cursive script is a partially cursive style of Chinese calligraphy. ...

The Japanese Kanji were adopted for recording the Japanese language from the 1st century AD. Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana Manyōgana Uses Furigana Okurigana Rōmaji   ) are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana (平仮名), katakana (片仮名), and the Arabic numerals. ...

The traditional style of Chinese writing emerges with the Clerical script in the 5th century AD. The Regular script style matures in the 7th century. The clerical script or chancery script (Traditional Chinese: ; Simplified Chinese: ; pinyin: lìshu; Japanese: 隸書体, Reishotai;) is an archaic style of Chinese calligraphy which, due to its high legibility to modern readers, is still being used for artistic flavor in a variety of functional applications such as headlines, signboards and advertisements. ... Sheng Jiao Xu by Chu Suiliang: calligraphy of the Kaishu style The Regular Script, or in Chinese Kaishu (楷書 Pinyin: kǎishū) and Japanese Kaisho, also commonly known as Standard Regular (正楷), is the newest of the Chinese calligraphy styles (peaked at the 7th century), hence most common in modern writings and...

The Chinese script spread to Korea together with Buddhism from the 7th century (Hanja). Adaptation for Vietnamese (Chữ Nôm) emerged in the 13th century. This article is about the Korean civilization. ... The grounds of Koreas Buryeongsa Temple. ... Korean writing systems Hangul Hanja Hyangchal Gugyeol Idu Mixed script Korean romanization Revised Romanization of Korean McCune-Reischauer Yale Romanization Hanja is the Korean name for Chinese characters. ... Chữ nôm (𡦂喃 lit. ...

Modern history

Areas using only Chinese characters in green; in conjunction with other scripts, dark green; maximum extent of historic usage, light green. (does not include other territories annexed by Japan in WWII)

Further information: Simplified Chinese

Although most of the simplified Chinese characters in use today are the result of the works moderated by the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the 1950s and 60s, character simplification predates the PRC's formation in 1949. One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lu Feikui, who proposed in 1909 that simplified characters should be used in education. In the years following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, many anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals sought ways to modernise China. In the 1930s and 1940s, discussions on character simplification took place within the Kuomintang government, and a large number of Chinese intellectuals and writers have long maintained that character simplification would help boost literacy in China. In many world languages, literacy has been promoted as a justification for spelling reforms. The People's Republic of China issued its first round of official character simplifications in two documents, the first in 1956 and the second in 1964. In the 1950s and 1960s, while confusion about simplified characters was still rampant, transitional characters that mixed simplified parts with yet-to-be simplified parts of characters together appeared briefly, then disappeared. Image File history File links 800px-Map-Chinese_Characters. ... Image File history File links 800px-Map-Chinese_Characters. ... Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Year 1949 (MCMXLIX) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1909 (MCMIX) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Students in Beijing rallied during the May Fourth Movement. ... The 1930s were described as an abrupt shift to more radical and conservative lifestyles, as countries were struggling to find a solution to the Great Depression, also known as the [[. In East Asia, the rise of militarism occurred. ... The 1940s decade ran from 1940 to 1949. ... The Kuomintang of China (abbreviation KMT) [1], also often translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party, is a political party in the Republic of China (ROC), now on Taiwan, and is currently the largest political party in terms of seats in the Legislative Yuan, and the oldest political party in the... The aim of spelling reform is to make spelling easier for learners and users by removing its difficulties. ... A car from 1956 Year 1956 (MCMLVI) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Also Nintendo emulator: 1964 (emulator). ... The 1950s decade refers to the years 1950 to 1959 inclusive. ... The 1960s decade refers to the years from 1960 to 1969. ...

"Han unification" was completed for the purposes of Unicode in 1991 (Unicode 1.0). Han unification is the process used by the authors of Unicode and the Universal Character Set to map multiple character sets of the CJK languages into a single set of unified characters. ... The Unicode Standard, Version 5. ...

Written styles

Sample of the cursive script by Chinese Tang Dynasty calligrapher Sun Guoting, c. 650 AD.

There are numerous styles, or scripts, in which Chinese characters can be written, deriving from various calligraphic and historical models. Most of these originated in China and are now common, with minor variations, in all countries where Chinese characters are used. These characters were used over 3,000 years ago. Image File history File links CaoshuShupu. ... Image File history File links CaoshuShupu. ... For the band, see Tang Dynasty (band). ... Part of the Treatise on Calligraphy Sun Guoting (Traditional Chinese: 孫過庭), or Sun Qianli (孫虔禮)[1]was a Chinese calligrapher of the early Tang Dynasty, remembered for his cursive calligraphy and his Treatise on Calligraphy (書譜). The work was the first important theoretical work on Chinese calligraphy, and has remained important ever since...

The Oracle Bone and Bronzeware scripts being no longer used, the oldest script that is still in use today is the Seal Script (simplified Chinese: 篆书; traditional Chinese: 篆書; pinyin: zhuànshū). It evolved organically out of the Zhou bronze script, and was adopted in a standardized form under the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. The seal script, as the name suggests, is now only used in artistic seals this was copied and sticked. Few people are still able to read it effortlessly today, although the art of carving a traditional seal in the script remains alive; some calligraphers also work in this style. Oracle bone script (Chinese: 甲骨文; Hanyu Pinyin: ; literally shell bone writing) refers to incised (or, rarely, brush-written) ancient Chinese characters found on oracle bones, which are animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in ancient China. ... Left: Bronze fang zun ritual wine container dated c. ... 《尋隱者不遇》—賈島 松下問童子 言師採藥去 隻在此山中 雲深不知處 Seeking the Master but not Meeting by Jia Dao Beneath a pine I asked a little child. ... Simplified Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: or ; traditional Chinese: or ; pinyin: or ) is one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. ... Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... For the volcano in Indonesia, see Emperor of China (volcano). ... The monarch known now as Qin Shi Huang (Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Chin Shih-huang) (259 BCE – September 10, 210 BCE),[1] personal name Yíng Zhèng, was king of the Chinese State of Qin from 247 BCE to 221 BCE (officially still under the Zhou Dynasty), and... Japanese name Kanji: Hiragana: Korean name Hangul: Hanja: Vietnamese name Quốc ngữ: Hán tá»±: The art of calligraphy is widely practiced and revered in the East Asian civilizations that use Chinese characters. ...

Scripts that are still used regularly are the "Clerical Script" (simplified Chinese: 隶书; traditional Chinese: 隸書; pinyin: lìshū) of the Qin Dynasty to the Han Dynasty, the Weibei (Chinese: 魏碑; pinyin: wèibēi), the "Regular Script" (simplified Chinese: 楷书; traditional Chinese: 楷書; pinyin: kǎishū) used for most printing, and the "Semi-cursive Script" (simplified Chinese: 行书; traditional Chinese: 行書; pinyin: xíngshū) used for most handwriting. The clerical script or chancery script (Traditional Chinese: ; Simplified Chinese: ; pinyin: lìshu; Japanese: 隸書体, Reishotai;) is an archaic style of Chinese calligraphy which, due to its high legibility to modern readers, is still being used for artistic flavor in a variety of functional applications such as headlines, signboards and advertisements. ... Simplified Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: or ; traditional Chinese: or ; pinyin: or ) is one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. ... Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Qin Dynasty in 210 BC Capital Xianyang Language(s) Chinese Government Monarchy History  - Unification of China 221 BC  - Death of Qin Shi Huangdi 210 BC  - Surrender to Liu Bang 206 BC The Qin Dynasty (Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Chin Chao) (221 BC - 206 BC) was preceded by the... Han Dynasty in 87 BC Capital Changan (202 BC–9 AD) Luoyang (25 AD–190 AD) Language(s) Chinese Religion Taoism, Confucianism Government Monarchy History  - Establishment 206 BC  - Battle of Gaixia; Han rule of China begins 202 BC  - Interruption of Han rule 9 - 24  - Abdication to Cao Wei 220... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Sheng Jiao Xu by Chu Suiliang: calligraphy of the Kaishu style The Regular Script, or in Chinese Kaishu (楷書 Pinyin: kÇŽishÅ«) and Japanese Kaisho, also commonly known as Standard Regular (正楷), is the newest of the Chinese calligraphy styles (peaked at the 7th century), hence most common in modern writings and... Simplified Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: or ; traditional Chinese: or ; pinyin: or ) is one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. ... Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Japanese name Kanji: Kana: Korean name Hangul: Hanja: Semi-cursive script is a partially cursive style of Chinese calligraphy. ... Simplified Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: or ; traditional Chinese: or ; pinyin: or ) is one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. ... Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ...

The Cursive Script (simplified Chinese: 草书; traditional Chinese: 草書; pinyin: cǎoshū; literally "grass script") is not in general use, and is a purely artistic calligraphic style. The basic character shapes are suggested, rather than explicitly realized, and the abbreviations are extreme. Despite being cursive to the point where individual strokes are no longer differentiable and the characters often illegible to the untrained eye, this script (also known as draft) is highly revered for the beauty and freedom that it embodies. Some of the Simplified Chinese characters adopted by the People's Republic of China, and some of the simplified characters used in Japan, are derived from the Cursive Script. The Japanese hiragana script is also derived from this script. Cursive is a style of handwriting in which all the letters in a word are connected, making a word one single (complicated) stroke. ... Simplified Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: or ; traditional Chinese: or ; pinyin: or ) is one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. ... Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Simplified Chinese characters (Simplified Chinese: 简体字; Traditional Chinese: 簡體字; pinyin: jiǎntǐzì; also called 简化字/簡化字, jiǎnhuàzì) are one of two standard character sets of printed contemporary Chinese written language. ... Hiragana ) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana and kanji; the Latin alphabet is also used in some cases. ...

There also exist scripts created outside China, such as the Japanese Edomoji styles; these have tended to remain restricted to their countries of origin, rather than spreading to other countries like the standard scripts described above. Edomoji (江戸文字) are Japanese lettering styles which were invented for advertising in the Edo period. ...

Oracle Bone Script	Seal Script	Clerical Script	Semi-Cursive Script	Cursive Script	Regular Script (Traditional)	Regular Script (Simplified)	Pinyin	Meaning
						—	rì	Sun
						—	yuè	Moon
						—	shān	Mountain
						—	shuǐ	Water
						—	yǔ	Rain
						—	mù	Wood
						—	hé	Millet
						—	rén	Human
						—	nǚ	Woman
						—	mǔ	Mother