Saturday, April 15, 2017

Chinese Calligraphy History (12) The far-reaching influence of Chinese calligraphy on Chinese culture and daily life

For thousands years, how good people handwriting or calligraphy skills had been far more important than how their contents of articles. If you were not good at writing the characters in imperial examination, you would be failed because the examiners didn't even take a look what you wrote.

Which forced every one who wanted to pass the exam spent a lot of time to improve their calligraphy writing skills. Even you failed the examination, you were respected by people just because you could write good calligraphy.

Let's see some examples, how Chinese calligraphy influences Chinese culture.

When you go to China, you can see big calligraphy signs or board in every natural scenery or historic or cultural landscape. Some are hundreds meters high on mountains. You can see them miles away just like Mount Rushmore National Memorial in U.S.



The above is the big calligraphy stone in Tai Shan (Tai Mountain). The four big red Chinese characters on the big stone “五嶽獨尊“ mean “The first holy mountain of China”. The characters are so big and high, giving all visitors a great impressive when they see it. People can’t separate the Tai Shan Mountain from the characters on the big stone. Without the stone with characters, Tai Shan would have much less cultural influence on people.

The biggest building in Forbidden City is "Hall of Supreme Harmony",


The most important ceremonies were held there. When you walk close to the building, you can see big three characters in clerical scripts on the top of the building


The above are about the Emperor, and his administration. The ordinary people also need calligraphy for holidays, weddings, funerals, etc.

In the spring festival, traditionally, every family posts Spring Festival couplets on the sides of the front door. The writing couplets for sale is a big business. 





People built memorial archway with big calligraphic characters.


The above is the Anti- Japanese Victory Memorial in Zhejiang, Hunan (1946), where Japanese signed the instrument of surrender in Aug. 1945. President Chiang Kai-Shek and General He Yingqin wrote calligraphy couplets on the memorial. Without the couplets, the Memorial would have been much less impact on people who visit the site.

Famous restaurants normally invited the best calligrapher to write their door plaque.


The above is “全聚德“ - the famous Beijing Duck Restaurant, original Beijing Duck created there. 

Almost all Chinese famous restaurants have their own big calligraphy store boards hang on their doors, which is similar as in western countries.



The above is the logo of Peking University (Beijing University) designed by 鲁迅 (Lu Xun, 1881 - 1936, famous writer)

The middle is modified Chinese clerical characters “北大“ , which means “Peking University. It is symmatric and beautiful, widely accepted by all Peking University alumni.



The above is a Tea commercial advertisement.

The big black character on the right up is the running script for “茶“, means “Tea”. The character is surrounded by green bamboo, and tea pot, and bows. People feel the smell of tea, irrespressible attraction. The combination of the character and the images make this advertisement very impressive.

All above we talked, you may find some thing similar in western countries. However there is one application of calligraphy you can't find any similar in any western country.

First is Chinese calligraphy couplets (对联). We have seen the couplets on the Anti-Japanese Memorial, here I am talking about the couplets sticked on the sides of doors of every family in China.

Every holiday, or wedding, or funeral, or graduation ceremony, ....... Chinese like to write couplets on the door, or gate, or hang on the sides of stage, etc.

I give an example to show what couplets mean




Eat well sleep well have fun day by day
Study hard work hard make money more and more.

Which was created by a unknown person, I guess a foreign student in China.

Eat - Study, Well - Hard, Have - Make, Fun - Money, Day - More, By - And, each pair except Day - More is relative the same functional words, i.e. verb-verb, noun -noun, adjective-adjective, etc.

But the English word are not the same length, makes the English couplets are not the same length in layout. However, Chinese characters are all the same size, Chinese couplets could be restricly the same length, symmetric.



If people got married, the couplets are a must. In addition the couplets, a red double "Happiness" (双喜)should be sticked on the windows or doors, and in the room.




Some are very artistic.



There are much more examples.

We can see that Chinese calligraphy has deeply rooted in Chinese culture, commecial activity and people daily life.


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


Chinese Pictographic Calligraphy.blogspot.com/


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



Friday, March 24, 2017

Chinese Calligraphy History (11) The callibraphy flourished after invention of papermaking technology

Before papermaking technology, the major writing media was bamboo or wood slips which are very narrow. The width of most slips were about 1 cm, very few wood slip could be wide more than 3 cm, the widest wood slip could be 6.5 cm. But most people wrote on 1 cm slips. Which dramatically limited people's writing. For example, people wrote Horse vertically like the shell bone script in below


because if they wrote horizontally

which would not be all in the slip.

Some similar animal characters are

Dog

Tiger

Pig

Elephant

and more.

The current standard printing scripts of the above characters have inherited from the vertical writing style.

When the papermaking technology made paper available and affordable to most people in West Han Dynasty. Han Dynasty Emperiors learnt the lessons from the Qin Dynasty made, which strictly controlled the people with very harsh laws, so falled down just 20 + years. The Han Dynasty greatly relaxed the control on people, art, and all field. So people were inspired to make more food, goods, create new art, including calligraphy. Many field had started flourishing. Han Dynasty became one of the two greatest dynasties (another one is Tang Dynasty) with prosperity in all fields. Chinese called themselves as "Han People" (汉人), and Chinese as "Han Language" (汉语) because they have been proud of the achievement of Han Dynasty.

Except the early Chinese calligraphy scripts like shell bone, big seal, small seal scripts in the past thousands years, all other Chinese calligraphy scripts emerged explosively in Han Dynasty almost in the same period. They are clerical script, running script, cursive script, and standard script, partially because the Han Dynasty relaxed policy, and partially because the papermaking technology.

Let's see them one by one. I chose the most popluar character Dragon and Tiger as the sample characters.

Shell bone script

Dragon - shell script


Dragon - big seal script


Dragon - small seal script


Dragon - clerical script


Dragon - standard script


Dragon - running script


Dragon - cursive script


We can see the different style of the scripts. The late four all appeared in Han Dynasty. I need to point out that the running script and cursive script are very flexible, different people wrote differently even though there are still rules to guide the writing, but people could have their own personality in writing. 

If we say the small seal script, clerical script, and standard script are formal scripts for printing as language, then the running script, and cursive script are more like art for calligraphers to express their personality, their emotions. 

Let see another famous character Tiger.

Tiger - shell bone script


Tiger - big seal script

Tiger - small seal script


Tiger - clerical script

Tiger - standard script


Tiger - running script

Tiger - cursive script
It is same as character Dragon.

We can see from clerical script, the strokes are more stretching out than the older scripts like shell bone, big seal, and small seal scripts because paper gave the writer more space to extend the strokes.

The clerical script reached its flourishing peak in East Han Dynasty (25 - 220). The running script reached its peak in Jin Dynasty (266 - 420). The standard script reached its peak in Tang Dynasty (618 - 907), which is another great dynasty in China History. Cursive script reached its peak in late Tang Dynasty and Song Dynasty (960 - 1279).

Since Song Dynasty, Chinese calligraphy has more popular and many new way emerged but no revolutionary new script was created, and accepted by society.

The papermaking technology is the milestone in calligraphy history. Paper is for people to write more flexible a single characters, but also riched the whole display ways for multiple characters like a poet, or proverb, people could write tens characters on one page, which would need tens slips otherwise . In addition, with big space paper, it was possible for writers to write characters in connecting each other, created relationship between characters, which is a very important calligraphy art feature.

The calligraphy is partial art and partial language, which is unique in the world. When you see a calligraphy art, you see a picture-alive art, you also are touched by the language content.

has deeply rooted in Chinese culture from the national exam in more than one thousand years to the couplets on the each house doors, from calligraphy works in decent exhibition valued hundred thousand dollars to letters between people.



If we take away all the calligraphy in any famous historic and cultural site, such as Forbidden City, they immediately become meaningless.


Hall of Supreme Harmony (calligraphy on board) in Forbidden City



The first holy Mountain (calligraphy on stone) in Tai Shan


The first gate of the world (calligraphy on city gate board) in Shanhai Gate of the Great Wall east end.

If you don't understand calligraphy, it is impossible for you to completely understand Chinese culture.