Museum Puts Primitive Hanzi Writing in Context

Chinese characters, also called hanzi, have always been considered the quintessence of Chinese people’s wisdom throughout history. By virtue of their widespread current use in East Asia and historic use across the sinosphere, hanzi is among one of the most widely adopted writing systems in the world.

In addition, unlike other ancient characters that disappeared in history, hanzi has been continuously used for thousands of years and thus is widely known as one of the world’s oldest writing systems.

An ongoing exhibition in Hangzhou Museum showcases the origin, development and spread of hanzi through a series of antiques that trace the beginning of its ancient characters and record their evolution in tandem with history.

Chinese forefathers are believed to have weaved knots and drawn primitive symbols to record things before the creation of hanzi. Later, according to myth, a man named Cang Jie invented Chinese characters inspired by his study of the world’s animals, the earth’s landscape and the stars.

Historians, however, don’t believe the origins of hanzi can be attributed to one individual. On the contrary, they are inclined to believe the contemporary civilization of the day just spread the hanzi system around the country.

The earliest materials that recorded hanzi were animal bones and tortoise shells dating back to the Shang Dynasty (c.16th century-11th century BC) by which time hanzi had already matured as a writing system. These inscriptions are known today as the oracle bone scripts, or jiaguwen.

The discovered jiaguwen were records of divinations performed in communication with royal ancestral spirits. The shortest are only several characters, while the longest are 30 to 40 characters.

These divinatory inscriptions are the earliest surviving evidence of ancient Chinese writing. The oracle bone evidence was excavated in Anyang, Henan Province, the capital city of the ancient Shang Dynasty.

It was also during the Shang Dynasty that another character form, bronze script, also called jinwen, came into being. Historically, it is considered to be the successor of jiaguwen.

The Shang and Zhou (c.11th century-221 BC) dynasties are labelled as the bronze era in Chinese history because the production of bronze articles boomed during their reigns. Bronze containers became ritual vessels engraved with inscriptions related to ancestor worship, imperial edicts, covenants and ceremony.

The bronze articles displayed in the museum were unearthed from Shang Dynasty tombs in the Sanmenxia area of Henan Province. They feature symmetrical patterns, jinwen and exquisite bronze production techniques.

Jinwen was used for more than a millennium until it was replaced by seal script in the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC).

The Qin Kingdom conquered six other co-existing kingdoms during the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) and established the Qin Dynasty. China was unified under the rule of Qin by emperor Ying Zheng who was called Qin Shi Huang, which means the first sovereign ruler of Qin.

Before the establishment of Qin, there were multiple variants of writing characters used in different kingdoms. In order to rule the country in a unified way, Qin Shi Huang standardized the characters into a seal scrip, also called xiaozhuan. It is still widely used today in decorative engravings and seals.

The standardization of characters was considered a breakthrough in Chinese history, boosting social development and helping to build a united country.

Xiaozhuan evolved over time into a script, also called lishu, and connoted the dominant writing style in the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220).

Lishu simplified xiaozhuan and helped to accelerate the speed of writing. Also, it featured a solemn style that made people feel majestic. In addition, lishu laid the foundations for Chinese calligraphy. A series of calligraphic variants derived from it and in return enriched the Chinese calligraphic culture.

The Hangzhou exhibition displays a dozen tiles that show lishu carvings. During the Han Dynasty tiles became a new medium for craftsmen to design patterns and write characters. Today, they are considered precious antiques for archeologists to research Han culture.

The regular script, kaishu, was born during the Eastern Han Dynasty (AD 25-220). It developed throughout the Northern and Southern Dynasties (AD 420-589) and finally matured in the Sui (AD 581-618) and Tang (AD 618-907) dynasties. The present-day hanzi writing system is based on regular script.

Date: Through December 31 (closed on Mondays)

Address: No. 18, Liangdaoshan