Chinese Calligraphy History (10) Papermaking technology and its impact on calligraphy

After people created Clerical script, writing was much faster than with Small Seal script because Clerical script was more flexible and more straight strokes. However, the bamboo slips and wooden tablets for writing were inconvenient. They were heavy, thick, and difficult to carry and store. Silk was good for writing, but it was too expensive. 

The desire for cheap light writing material to replace bamboo slips and wooden tablets was very high. 

From the archaeological finds, experts believe that in the early of West Han Dynasty (208 B.C. - 8 A.D.), people started to make paper for writing. The paper making technology was not good until Mr. Cai Lun' great contribution about 200 years later in East Han Dynasty.

Mr. Cai Lun (63 - 121 A. D., East Han Dynasty) was an Imperial Palace official, in charge of making palace utensils. He studied the folk cloth making technologies, he tried to use tree skin, old cloth, hemp plants, fish net materials to make paper. He was successfully in 105 A. D., making the breakthrough in calligraphy history. Chinese believe he was the first person in the world to invent papermaking technology and make paper. 

Cai Lun (Han Dynasty)

Paper Making process (Han Dynasty)

The paper invention made the writing so cheap, the calligraphy finally got into people’s daily life. People had paper, plus brush, ink, people had all writing tools. The comprehensive calligraphy prosperity was ready to break out.

With paper in hand, the writing was from one dimensional to two dimensional, which gave the writer great freedom in writing. Writing on slips, just like riding a horse in small mountain road, you could only walk slowly. Writing on paper, you have great plains, you gallop in the grasslands. 

As paper became popular, more people could write. So in the late of Han Dynasty, the Standard script, and the Running script were emerged.  The Cursive was believed to be emerged in Warring States （403－ 221 B. C.),  but got promoted in Han Dynasty because people were not limited on the bamboo or wooden slips to draw a very narrow small seal script any more,

the brush could go horizontal freely.

Let's compare the two style scripts

On the left are small seal scripts of Mountain, Wood, and Door. On the right are corresponding clerical scripts of Mountain, Wood, and Door. 

We see the clerical scripts are shorter and wider than their counterparts of small seal scripts.

With paper, people could draw characters more freely, so it is understandable that standard script, running script, and cursive script, were all appeared and developed in Han Dynasty.

Zhang Cao - the earliest cursive script in Han Dynasty

It is paper that made Running script and Cursive script popular and progress possible. 

The Running and Cursive scripts are much more flexible, there is no clear separation.

People more like the flexible, artistic, personalized Running script and Cursive script. Even many Emperors liked Running and Cursive scripts. For example, Shimin Li (599 － 649，Tang Dynasty)，the second Emperor of Tang Dynasty loved Wang Xizhi’s Running script writings very much, collected all Wang's works found in that time. Wang Xizhi (303 － 361 A. D., Jin Dynasty) was believed to be the greatest calligraphist in China. The Running script was accepted as an official script for government documents sometimes. But the major official script was still Standard Script. The print script has been Song script since Song Dynasty.

Wang Xizhi (303 - 361 A. D. , Jin Dynasty)

Lan Ting Xu by Wang Xi Zhi (Jin Dynasty)

The Running script and Cursive script represent the direction of artistic Chinese calligraphy, which is still active and vitality. Because different people have different personality, and writing style,  there are many different calligraphic works. This is the art feature of the Chinese calligraphy, and why it is attractive forever.

Cursive script - 黄庭坚 (Huang, Tingjian), Tang Dynasty

The governments used the standard scripts in documents which were formal, no confusion. Clerical script was the standard script in Han Dynasty, Standard script has been the standard writing script since Tang Dynasty （618 － 907). Song script has been the standard print script since Song Dynasty (960 － 1279.

Standard script - 颜真卿 （Yan, Zhenqing), Tang Dynasty

All Clerical script, Standard script, Running script, Cursive script were developed after the paper invention. Before paper, people wrote characters in one dimensional; after paper, people write characters in two-dimensional, which dramatically increased the calligraphy expression.

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Chinese Calligraphy History (9) Chinese character clerical revolution and its influence on Chinese architectural features

The clerical revolution

Before Qin Dynasty, the popular script was big seal script, which is beautiful.

From left to right: Bird, Eyebrow, and Fly.

But it has too much curves, very pictography, which is difficult to draw, can't write fast. As the more and more writing needed, people started to draw not so curved, less pictography to make the writing faster, gradually, a new style was formed in which more curves became straight lines, more flexible, more informal. It is normally on wood slips which are wider than bamboo slips, easier to go straight horizontally.

The above is the wood slip in Warring States Period (475 - 221 BC). The characters on the slip have more straight lines, less curves, which are the earliest clerical script.

The change is gradually, consistently, and revolutionarily. The Chinese had been changing from variously pictographic to characters to more standardized language characters with more straight lines but less or no pictography.

After Qin Dynasty, West Han Dynasty (202 B. C. - 8 A. D.), followed by East Han (25 － 220 A. D.) , the emperors of Han learnt the lesson from the mistake of The First Emperor of Qin, they lost the control on people, especially on intellectuals, who could write more freely on what they wanted. The Han (West and East Han) Dynasty became one of two greatest Dynasties (another one is Tang Dynasty), also the longest Dynasty in Chinese history. During the peaceful long time, Han not only had great economic prosperity, but created great literature and art also.

Chinese have called themselves as Han Ren (Han People), Chinese are proud of the great achievement of Han. Some called Tang Ren (Tang People). But most Chinese say "I am Han Ren".

The clerical script became the most popular script in Han Dynasty. But the government never tried to standardize the script, so there are many different styles of clerical script at that time and all still are used today.

Clerical script has more straight lines, further away from the pictogram of characters. But it has some flexible in strokes, which make it beautiful. Unlike Small Seal script, Clerical script is still widely used in China. 

Ritual monument （Han Dynasty)

Cao Quan monument (Han Dynasty)

The four big seal scripts: Bird, Eyebrow, and Fly became clerical scripts:

The strokes are more straight lines, less curved.

The revolutionary change from big seal and small seal scripts to clerical script is called Clerical Revolution, which is the milestone of Chinese character evolution, before that, Chinese characters are pictographic and artistic; after that, Chinese characters are less or no pictographic but standardized, more like language.  

The influence of clerical script on Chinese architectural features

The typical stroke for Clerical script is the press down stroke or long horizontal stroke. It is wave-alive stroke, called “Insect head and swallow tail”. 

The top character is 上（up), we talked about in the previous section. It is an indicative character. On the left of Its bottom line is Insect-head alike, on the right is swallow tail alike. The bottom character is 人（human, or people). The end of Its right press down stroke is Swallow trail alike. 

The “swallow tail” is the most beautiful stroke in Chinese Calligraphy. Why did people write a wave-alike “insect head and swallow tail”? No one has answered. I think that the Clerical was from the Small Seal script, which has only wave curves, as most wave lines became straight lines to speed up the writing, people might have found that the character looked more beautiful if one stroke kept the wave.

Unlike Qin Dynasty, artists had much more freedom to write their own styles, so there are many different styles of “Insect head and swallow tail”. The angle, the length, and the thickness are all different. 

On the above, we see the flat, upturned, long, thin and short fat swallow tails. The "upturned" one is the most typical "Insect head and swallow tail" stroke. 

The wave stroke in Clerical script makes Clerical script very unique and beautiful. At the same time, all other strokes are straight lines, so it is also a standardized script, and has been widely used from form events, and inform daily life too. Every Chinese understands, and enjoys its beauty. It is the most used script in calligraphy.

Why did people use wave line in Clerical script? We don’t know. However, Taiwan famous artist Professor Chiang Hsun (蒋勋）thinks that the wave line of Clerical script reflects the ancient Chinese philosophy. Chinese have believed “heaven, earth and human unity”. The long line presents the Trinity.  He found that most important traditional Chinese buildings had bird-tail cornice alike roof since Han Dynasty, which are so similar to the wave line of Clerical script. 

The building in Forbidden City. We can see the "Swallow Tail" on alice eaves.

The typical ancient Cbninese cornice

Professor Chiang believes that it is the result from the influence of the philosophy behind the wave line of the Clerical script. The bungalow and alice eaves are the most typical characteristic of Chinese, Japanese and many East Asian traditional buildings.  It is very different from high, no alice eaves Gothic architecture of western traditional buildings.

 Milan Cathedral 

I agree with Professor Jiang. I think that it is the ancient Chinese philosophy that had influenced both Chinese architectural style and Chinese calligraphy.

Note: Update information

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Chinese Calligraphy History (8) The characters on bamboo and wooden slips

Bamboo and wooden slips for writing

As mentioned in previous posts, in Warring States Time (403 - 221 B.C), there was no paper, Chinese started to write characters on bamboo slips, wooden slips or wooden tablets. Because they were much cheaper than the animal skin, or silk, many people could afford to use them. So the writing finally became popular, and played important role in economy, education and people's daily life since then.

- Bamboo slips with characters

At that time, people started to use brush and ink to write on the slips or tablets, which were very narrow, only 0.8 - 1 cm wide (0.3 - 0.4 inch) wide, 8 inches to 1.2 feet long. So people wrote up down with only one vertical line, after one finished one slip, then wrote on the next slip.

The narrow slips dramatically limited people to write horizontally, we see many characters of animal are written vertically in shell bone script, or big seal script.

From left to right in the first line: 犬-Dog), 虎-Tiger, 馬 - Horse,
the second line: 豕- Pig,  象- Elephant

Because it is easier to write them vertically than horizontally.

The clerical scripts for above four characters are

Difficult to see the similarities to the shell bone scripts in first two, but some similarities in the rest three.

The right-handed people liked to hold the brush with right hand, the left hand held the slip, after finished one slip, he put it down, then took another blank slip on the left, then put down on the left side of the first slip after finishing writing. Because more right-handed people than left-handed people, so all found slips or tablets were written from right to left. It took hundreds of years before the paper was invent by Lun Cai (105 AD), the up down and right left writing rule continued even after paper was used widely.

After writing finished, people made holes on each slip or tablet, then linked them with ropes to form books.

So the books in Shell-Bone script and Small seal script are like the linked slips.

- Left: Bamboo slips with characters; Right: 冊 - Book in Shell-bone script

Because the characters were written on the slips with ink, if there was an error in writing, the best way to erase them is to scrape it with knife. So the character “cancel” is

- A book on the left with a knife on the right means "cancel".

In Qin Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses, the experts found that a very small Warriors have no weapon but a small knife, brush and bamboo slips, they think that those people were secretaries in the army. The knife was used to erase the errors.

- The Terro Cotta Warriors.

Another character related to 册 - book is 典 - dictionary，

- It looks like a big book held by two hands (Shell-bone script)

In Small seal script, the above three characters, 冊-book,  刪 - cancel and 典 - dictionary are as following

- from left to right: 册 - book, 删 - cancel, 典 - dictionary

They are similar as what they are in Shell-bone script. But the bottom of 典 - dictionary on the right is like a table or shelf insead of two hands, which is closer to the situation in real life.

Because one slip is much thicker than paper, and it could only take a few characters, so people needed so many slips to write a book that a book might need a big vehicle to transfer.  There is a Chinese proverb: 學富五車，in which 學－knowledge, 富－rich, 五－five, 車－vehicle, which means that a person has so much knowledge, who needs five vehicles to take or move his books. Five vehicle books may only have 10 or less book in paper.

- the books of bamboo slips.

Note: Update information

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Chinese Calligraphy History (7) Why First Emperor did unify scripts into Small Seal script

First Emperor unified script with Small Seal script

From Shang Dynasty to Warring States, more than 1200 years, Ancient Chinese used Shell-Bone script and Bronze script (similar to Shell-Bone script on bronze). As we have seen in previous section that one characters has many variants, like 齒（tooth) and 車（car).

齒 - Tooth variants in Shell-Bone script

車 - Car variants in Shell-Bone script

魚 - Fish variants in Shell-Bone script

Because different people drew characters differently, so there were many different “Tooth”, “Car”, "Fish", and others. In the early time, the characters were used in divination, an event not occurred often, not for ordinary people.  Only a few people needed to be able to read and write.

As China evolved from Stone Age to Bronze Age, the increased productivity desired more cooperation and communication between people. More and more people wrote their important data, schedules, letters and records.

It was too slow to carve on the shell or bone, and too expensive and very slow to cast characters on bronze. Some rich people could write on animal skin, and silk, much faster but very expensive. Ordinary people made bamboo or wooden slips for writing, which was cheap and more affordable.

- characters on bronze tripod

People could make ink and brush at that time. As more and more people wrote, there were more and more variants of each character. Before Qin Dynasty, there were tens states in China, which made variants even more in state level. People had confusion in reading different variants.

After defeating all other countries, the First Emperor Qin Shihuang wanted to unify the scripts, he ordered Mr. Si Li, vice prime minister and calligraphist, to create a new script. Based on Shell-Bone script and Bronze script, Mr. Si Li created Small-Seal, which became the official script of Qin Dynasty. Mr. Li was the first calligraphist in China who has been remembered with his script.

- Taishan Stone - Small Seal script by Mr. Si Li (Qin Dynasty).

- Comparison between Shell-Bone, Bronze, and Small Seal scripts:
From left to right: Water, Stone, Fire, Bird, Sheep;
From top to bottom: Shell-Bone script, Bronze script, Small Seal script

We can see the difference between the three scripts is significant but still very similar. The bottom line of Small-Seal script became more curving and smoother in comparison with the Shell bone, and Big seal scripts (the top two lines). The dots in Shell-Bone or Bronze scripts became short lines in Small Seal script. Basically, the Small-Seal script is more beautiful but less pictograph. The characters were standardized as official language.

However, the Emperor Qin was a tyrannical dictator, people were forced to fight back. Even though Qin built the Great Wall, but couldn’t defend the attack from its own people. Qin Dynasty was overthrowing in less than 15 years (221 - 207 B.C.), became the shortest Dynasty in China history.

So the Small-Seal script didn’t get enough time to be accepted by ordinary people who used Clerical script much more often because it is easier to write.

- the top line is small seal script for Mountain, Water, and Moon; the bottom lines are clerical script for Mountain, Water, and Moon which are less curve, more straight lines.

After Qin Dynasty, the Small-Seal had been not popular for more than thousand years but the one form for one character was accepted by the society. From Qin Dynasty, all later scripts followed the rule, one form only for one character. The clerical script was developed by public not by government, but it followed one form for one character rule because people needed a standard language in communication.

1800 years past, some calligraphers in Qing Dynasty (1616 - 1912), discovered the beauty of Small-Seal, and started to use it in their calligraphy works. But it was still not popular among ordinary people and daily life because it is so different from late scripts, people couldn’t read it easily.

However, the graceful beauty of Small-Seal script is so attractive and unique that many people found that it is pretty to cut on stone or wooden seals, which may be the reason why it is called Small Seal script. It has been the most popular script used in seal for more than 2200 years since Qin.

- Seal Artist is cutting a seal in Small Seal script

- Stamp of "Good luck"

- Stamps of my name: Lewei Shang（商樂維)

Note: Update information

1, Amazing Chinese Characters blog has changed name to Learn Chinese with Pictography, and changed its URL address too, the new URL is

Learn Chinese with Pictography.blogspot.com/

2, Pictographic Chinese Calligraphy blog has changed name to Chinese Pictographic Calligraphy, and the new URL is

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You are welcome to access the new sites for Chinese learning. Please update your bookmarks.