The Evolution of Chinese Characters(II)
The Evolution of Chinese Characters
The present article is a section from a larger study entitled The History and Culture of Chinese Characters and serves as a continuation of my first article named The History and Origin of Chinese Characters (I). The purpose of the article is to exemplify the changes Chinese characters underwent during its history of evolution. Each of the 7 stages of development led to the final Simplified Characters that Chinese speaking people use nowadays. Chinese characters evolved from pictographic characters, created on the foundation of a picture, to pictophonetic characters, based on the meaning of strokes; from the Traditional complex characters to the Simplified easy to write characters; from different writing tools and materials to ink and paper; thus far one of the most widely used language created its own unique method of writing. Throughout the paper I will retell stories that contribute to the discovery of the Chinese characters, sustain my paper with either self-drawn characters or with pictures exemplifying the calligraphy of the specific script.
Keywords: Wang Yi Rong , Bronze ware, Qin Shi Huang , Scribe, Ancient characters, Modern characters, Zhong Yao, Zhang Xu, The Chinese Reform Committee, Simplified characters.
