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by Shixiang Fan
[Yuhua Pebble][Calligraphy][Seal Carving]
Chinese Calligraphy
Usually you need understand Chinese calligraphy to appreciate a seal. Many
seal design ideas come from Chinese calligraphy's theories. In this article,
Chinese calligraphy is briefly introduced to you.
Calligraphy is understood in China as the art of writing a good hand with the brush
or the study of the rules and techniques of this art. As such it is peculiar to
China and the few countries influenced by ancient Chinese culture.
In the history of Chinese art, calligraphy has always been held in equal importance
to painting. Great attention is also paid today to its development by holding
exhibitions of ancient and contemporary works and by organizing competitions
among youngsters and people from various walks of life. Sharing of experience
in this field often makes a feature in Sino-Japanese cultural exchange.
Chinese calligraphy, like the script itself, began with the hieroglyphs and,
over the long ages of evolution, has developed various styles and schools,
constituting an important part of the heritage of national culture.
 Chinese scripts are
generally divided into five categories:
the seal character (zhuan), the
official or clerical script (li),
the regular script (kai),
the running hand (xing)
and the cursive hand (cao).
1) The zhuan script or seal character was the
earliest form
of writing after the oracle inscriptions, which must have caused great
inconvenience because they lacked uniformity and many characters were
written in variant forms. The first effort for the unification of writing,
it is said, took place during the reign of
King Xuan (827-782 B. C.) of the Western Zhou Dynasty, when his taishi
(grand historian) Shi Zhou compiled a lexicon of 15
chapters, standardizing Chinese writing under script called zhuan.
It is also known as zhouwen after the name of the author.
This script, often used in seals, is translated into English as
the seal character, or as the "curly script" after the shape of its strokes.
Shi Zhou's lexicon (which some thought was written by a later author
of the state of Qin) had long been lost, yet it is generally agreed that
the inscriptions on the drum-shaped Qin stone blocks were basically of
the same style as the old zhuan
script.
When, in 221 B. C., Emperor Qin Shi Huang unified the whole of
China under one central government, he ordered his Prime Minister
Li Si to collect and sort out all the different systems of
writing hitherto prevalent in different parts of the country in a great
effort to unify the written language under one system. What Li did, in
effect, was to simplify the ancient zhuan (small seal) script.
Today we have a most valuable relic of this ancient writing in the creator
Li Si's own hand engraved on a stele standing in the Temple to
the God of Taishan Mountain in Shandong Province. The 2,200-year-old
stele, worn by age and weather,
has only nine and a half characters left on it.
 2)
The lishu (official script) came in the wake of the
xiaozhuan in the same short-lived Qin Dynasty (221 - 207 B. C.).
This was because the xiaozhuan, though a simplified form of script,
was still too complicated for the scribes in the various government offices
who had to copy an increasing amount of
documents. Cheng Miao, a prison warden, made a further simplification
of the xiaozhuan, changing the curly strokes into straight and
angular ones and thus making writing much easier. A further step away
from the pictographs, it was named lishu because li in classical
Chinese meant "clerk" or "scribe". Another version says that Cheng Miao,
because of certain offence, became a prisoner and slave himself; as the
ancients also called bound slaves "li", so the script was named
lishu or the "script of a slave".
 3)
The lishu was already very close to, and led to the adoption of,
kaishu, regular script. The oldest existing example
of this dates from the Wei (220-265), and the script developed under
the Jin (265-420). The standard writing today is square in form,
non-cursive and architectural in style. The characters are composed
of a number of strokes out of a total of eight kinds-the dot, the
horizontal, the vertical, the hook, the rising, the left-falling
(short and long) and the right-falling strokes. Any aspirant for
the status of calligrapher must start by learning to write a good hand
in kaishu.
 4)
On the basis of lishu also evolved caoshu
(grass writing or cursive hand), which is rapid and used for
making quick but rough copies. This style is subdivided into two
schools: zhangcao and jincao.
The first of these emerged at the time the Qin was replaced by the Han
Dynasty between the 3rd and 2nd centuries B. C. The characters, though
written rapidly, still stand separate one from another and the dots
are not linked up with other strokes.
Jincao or the modern cursive hand is said to have been developed
by Zhang Zhi (?-c. 192 A. D.) of the Eastern Han Dynasty, flourished in
the Jin and Tang dynasties and is still widely popular today.
It is the essence of the caoshu, especially jincao,
that the characters are executed swiftly with the strokes running
together. The characters are often joined up, with the last stroke
of the first merging into the initial stroke of the next. They also
vary in size in the same piece of writing, all seemingly dictated
by the whims of the writer.
A great master at caoshu was Zhang Xu (early 8th century)
of the Tang Dynasty, noted for the complete abandon with which he
applied the brush. It is said that he would not set about writing
until he had got drunk. This he did, allowing the brush to "gallop"
across the paper, curling, twisting or meandering in one unbroken
stroke, thus creating an original style. Today one may still see
fragments of a stele carved with characters in his handwriting,
kept in the Provincial Museum of Shaanxi.
 The best
example and model for xingshu, all Chinese calligraphers
will agree, is the  Inscription on
Lanting Pavilion (the bigger image on right side) in the hand of Wang Xizhi (321-379)
of the Eastern Jin Dynasty. To learn to write a nice hand in Chinese
calligraphy, assiduous and persevering practice is necessary. This
has been borne out by the many great masters China has produced.
Wang Xizhi, the great artist just mentioned, who has exerted
a profound influence on, and has been held in high esteem by,
calligraphers and scholars throughout history, is said to have
blackened in his childhood all the water of a pond in front of
his house by washing the writing implements in it after his daily
exercises. Another master, Monk Zhiyong of the Sui Dynasty (581-618)
was so industrious in learning calligraphy that he filled many jars
with worn-out writing brushes, which he buried in a "tomb of brushes".
Renewed interest in brush-writing has been kindled today among the pupils in
China, some of whom already show promises as worthy successors to the ancient
masters.
-www.chinavista.com
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© Shixiang Fan 2003, All rights reserved.
All seals were designed and carved by Shixiang Fan.
If you want to use any images in this web site, please get Shixiang Fan's permission first.
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