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.

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