The Evolution of Chinese Character Expression Forms and the “Outline Method” for Chinese Teaching

  By Lewei Shang

August 10, 2025

Part 1, The evolution of Chinese character expression forms

Many years ago, during a lecture on the pictographic origins of Chinese characters, an elderly white gentleman asked me: “Do Chinese characters have letters?”
I had never imagined anyone would ask such a question, to the point that I started doubting whether I’d understood him correctly. I asked again, and confirmed that he really was asking, “Do Chinese characters have letters?”
My first reaction was, “How could anyone ask such an unrealistic question?” Then I honestly told him: “Chinese characters don’t have letters.”

But that question forced me to think: Why don’t Chinese characters have letters? Do Chinese characters have something similar to letters?

What is a letter? A letter is the smallest unit in an alphabetic writing system, used to form words. Chinese is not an alphabetic writing system, so naturally it has no letters. But does it have a smallest independent unit — a structure that, like letters, cannot be divided further?
After some thought, I concluded that Chinese does have such units: independent characters that cannot be split. For example: 日 (sun), 月 (moon), 火 (fire), 土 (earth), 人 (person), 水 (water), 牛 (ox), 马 (horse), 山 (mountain), 女(woman), 口 (mouth), 门 (door), 目 (eye), 田 (field), 心 (heart), 木 (tree), and so on.

The difference between these “independent characters” and letters is that independent characters have meaning, while letters do not. But functionally, in terms of forming larger linguistic units, they are similar.
Another difference: alphabets usually have only 20–30 letters, while Chinese has about 400 independent characters — more than ten times as many. These 400+ are combined to form tens of thousands (or even over a hundred thousand) compound characters.
For example: 明 (bright), 看 (look), 灶 (stove), 妈 (mother), 吐 (spit), 炎 (flame), 休 (rest), 森 (forest), 林 (woods), 泪(tear), 思 (think), 相 (mutual). These are formed from two or more independent characters.

The emergence of compound characters allowed Chinese writing to expand from representing only tangible objects to expressing abstract concepts. For example: 明, 看, 休, 好, 思 are verbs or adjectives with no concrete shape. This greatly enhanced the expressive power of Chinese.

But even then, Chinese characters were still not enough — there were numbers, pronouns, and new concepts constantly emerging. What to do? Our ancestors invented loan characters (假借) and mutual explanation (转注).

• Loan characters: If there’s no existing character to express a meaning, borrow one temporarily. For example, 它originally meant “snake.” But since “it” (pronoun) had no character, 它 was borrowed for the pronoun. Over time, the pronoun meaning became far more common than the original “snake” meaning. People forgot 它 meant “snake,” so a new character 蛇 (with the “insect” radical) was created to restore the original meaning. Because the original character wasn’t returned, this is called loan borrowing.
• Mutual explanation: One character acquires multiple related meanings. For example, 乐 (lè, yuè), 重 (zhòng, chóng), 省 (shěng, xǐng), 行 (háng, xíng), 恶 (è, wù), 觉 (jiào, jué), etc. For instance, 乐 meaning “happy” (lè) didn’t have its own character, so the 乐 meaning “music” (yuè) was also used for “happy.” Unlike loan borrowing, no new character is created — it’s more convenient but leads to common misinterpretations, because one character can have several meanings, and learners may not master them all at once.

Some may ask: “How do you know which came first, yuè or lè?” I can say with certainty: yuè came first — you can see it from shell bone inscription.

For example, this is a set of bronze chime bells: bells on top, frame below. Chime bells are, of course, for playing music, so 乐 originally meant a musical instrument.
In many cases, we can’t be sure which meaning came first. But regardless, the result is the same: one character with multiple meanings. In fact, 99% of such polysemy comes from mutual explanation.

Even so, there still weren’t enough characters. Creating new ones is difficult and slow. What to do? Our ancestors invented word compounds — two or more characters combined to express a meaning. For example, “电脑” (computer) is formed from 电 (electricity) and 脑 (brain), instead of creating a brand-new character for “computer.”

This method works for endless terms: 计算机 (computer), 打印机 (printer), 割草机 (lawn mower), 拖拉机 (tractor), 推土机 (bulldozer), 洗碗机 (dishwasher), 订书机 (stapler). Whatever the machine, I can make a compound to name it. Same with vehicles: 马车 (horse carriage), 牛车 (ox cart), 汽车 (car), 火车 (train), 面包车 (van), 轿车 (sedan), 卡车(truck), 云霄飞车 (roller coaster), 班车 (shuttle bus), 板车 (flatbed cart), 自行车 (bicycle), 三轮车 (tricycle).

This also works with diseases: 胃病 (stomach illness), 肺病 (lung illness), 心脏病 (heart disease), 糖尿病 (diabetes). Making new compounds is far easier than inventing a new character for each disease.

The invention of compounds freed Chinese from the constant pressure to create new characters. Compound words also express meaning more precisely and subtly, and reduce confusion from homophones. For example, the single character 地sounds similar to 弟, 第, 帝, 蒂, 迪, 递, etc., which can cause misunderstandings. But in the compound 土地 (“land”), the meaning is clear, and full-homophone compounds are rarer than single-character homophones.

Our ancestors also invented reduplication: 清清楚楚 (very clear), 干干净净 (very clean), 漂漂亮亮 (very beautiful), 马马虎虎 (careless), 上上下下 (up and down). This largely solved homophone confusion.

Part 2, Outline Method for teaching Chinese

Inspired by the above thinking, I recently developed a new approach to teaching Chinese: learning should start with independent characters. There are about 400 — not too many, and you don’t need them all. They are highly pictographic, so introducing their shapes and evolution makes them easy to learn without rote memorization.

For example, the independent characters 日, 月, 水, 火, 土, 山, 女, 口, 牛, 马, 门, 目, 木, 人. 日 is a circle with a dot in the center. 山 is three peaks. 口 is a square.

Once you’ve learned them, move on to compound characters — they’re just combinations of the independent ones, easy to understand and remember, like building with blocks: 日 + 月 = 明 (bright), 门 + 口 = 问 (ask), 女 + 马 = 妈 (mother), 火 + 土 = 灶 (stove), 水 + 目 = 泪 (tear).

Finally, learn compounds: also like building blocks. 泪水 (tears), 土灶 (earthen stove), 好马 (good horse), 妈妈 (mother), 儿子 (son), 好人 (good person), 门口 (doorway), 明月 (bright moon).

I call this the “Outline Method” for Teaching Chinese Characters:

• Independent characters are the outline (纲)
• Compound characters are the main headings (目)
• Compound words are the subheadings (次目)

Grasp the outline (independent characters), and you lift up the main headings (compound characters). Lift those, and the subheadings (words) follow.

Example with 日: 

shell bone script

• 日 is the outline (independent character)
• Compound characters from 日: 早, 明, 星, 春, 时
• Words from these:
• 早 → 早晨, 早饭, 早操, 早退, 早自习
• 明 → 明天, 光明, 明显, 明月, 发明, 聪明
• 星 → 星光, 星火, 星辰, 零星, 卫星, 明星
• 春 → 春天, 春节, 春季, 春风, 春雨, 春联
• 时 → 时间, 时代, 时差, 时钟, 临时, 倒计时

So the evolution of Chinese character expression can be summarized as:

Independent characters → Compound characters → Compound words

This makes learning easier, faster, and more memorable. Combined with basic Chinese grammar, it forms a rich and complete language.

 

Why Are Small Seal Script Characters Slender and Rounded, While Clerical Script Characters Are Flat and Broad?

Anyone with a bit of calligraphy knowledge knows that small seal script (小篆) is slender and elongated, while clerical script (隶书) is short and flat. But why is that?

Chinese characters are often called “square characters,” yet aside from Song typeface (宋体字), almost none of the traditional scripts are truly square. Small seal script is tall and narrow, while clerical script is distinctly flat and wide. This contrast is one of the most striking in the evolution of Chinese writing.

 Qin Dynasty – Stele of Mount Yi - 秦朝《峄山刻石》

Qing Dynasty – Wu Rangzhi’s (吴让之)Seal Script Works 

From the Qin dynasty to the Qing dynasty, seal script consistently appeared in a slender, elongated form—elegant and graceful in posture.

Clerical script, on the other hand, is characterized by its short verticals and long horizontals—solid, steady, and expansive in appearance.

 

Han Dynasty – Stele of Yi Ying - 汉代乙瑛碑 

 

Han Dynasty – Stele of Ritual Vessels - 汉代礼器碑

Chinese writing evolved through the following stages:

Shell bone script → Bronze inscriptions → Big seal script → Small seal script → Clerical script → Standard script (kaishu)

Clerical script directly followed seal script, yet the two seem utterly different—like a son who bears no resemblance to his father. Historians call this transformation the “clerical transformation” (隶变) — a sudden, revolutionary change. 

Why Did the Clerical Transformation Occur?

Few studies have addressed this question. Since 2012, I have researched the pictographic origins and evolution of Chinese characters, and I have gradually formed my own view. Here it is—not necessarily correct, but worth considering.

Before the invention of large-scale papermaking in the Han dynasty, writing materials were bamboo slips—narrow strips, typically about 8 millimeters wide. This extreme narrowness restricted horizontal strokes, forcing writers to elongate characters vertically. Some characters were even written upright. For example, in shell bone inscriptions:

From left to right: horse (马), elephant (象), dog (犬), dream (梦)

This vertical compression was dictated by the bamboo medium.

For nearly two thousand years, from the Shang dynasty to the Eastern Han, people wrote under this constraint. Characters could not expand horizontally, and lines of text had to flow vertically. (I’ve discussed why ancient people wrote vertically in another article, “Why Did the Ancients Write From Top to Bottom?”)

The Invention of Paper: A 2D Revolution

When large-scale papermaking emerged in the Eastern Han, everything changed.
I emphasize large-scale because, as modern scholars agree, Cai Lun didn’t invent papermaking from scratch—he improved existing small-scale folk methods. Acting on an imperial assignment, he surveyed local papermakers, collected techniques, and developed a process suitable for mass production. Paper became affordable, and bamboo slips quickly became obsolete.

Bamboo slips are one-dimensional—you can only write in one direction.
Paper, however, is two-dimensional—a flat surface where you can write in all directions, especially horizontally.

After two thousand years of constraint, people finally had space to let their brushstrokes stretch freely sideways. In this “psychological rebound,” writers deliberately extended their strokes horizontally. To achieve longer horizontals, they straightened the small seal script’s inward curves—transforming gentle arcs into bold horizontal lines or sweeping diagonals (nà). 

For example:

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The curved upper and lower arcs of the small seal-script “木” (wood) were straightened in clerical script—the upper arc became a flat line, the lower arc flared outward into a left-falling and right-falling stroke.

 Thus, clerical script was born by straightening curves, primarily because straight lines were faster to write. 

In fact, this tendency began as early as the Warring States period, when people were still writing on bamboo slips. Evidence from Qin bamboo texts excavated in Jingzhou (1993) already shows characters dominated by straight strokes—essentially proto-clerical script, though without the distinctive “silkworm head and swallow tail” flares yet.

By the Han dynasty, after paper became common, clerical script matured into its recognizable form, complete with those elegant flaring strokes.

The Birth of “Silkworm Head and Swallow Tail”

No ancient documents explain how these features originated. One theory suggests that someone—perhaps unintentionally—wrote this way, others found it beautiful, and the style caught on, becoming a hallmark of clerical script.

For example,



In the character “聿,” all curves of small seal script were straightened.
 



In “進,” the short lower line of the “止” radical was pulled diagonally outward into a long sweeping stroke.

The Desire for Long Horizontals

In the early 1970s, during construction of the Xiang–Qian (from Hunan to Guizhou) and Zhi–Liu (from Henan to Guangxi) railways, engineers from the Cheng–Kun Railway (from Chengdu to Kunming) came to my hometown, Zhijiang, a town at the edge of the Yungui Plateau. The roads there were wide and flat, so the drivers—accustomed to treacherous mountain roads—drove wildly fast. When people asked why, they said, “We were stifled too long on the narrow roads of the Cheng–Kun line—now we can finally drive freely!”

It was the same with writing.

After centuries of cramped bamboo slips, people finally had “wide roads” (paper) and expressed their joy by writing with long horizontals and sweeping strokes.

If a character lacked such long strokes, Han calligraphers would boldly redesign or even rotate it to create one.

For example，

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The seal-script “heart” had no long horizontals. In clerical script, scribes reinterpreted its curves and stretched one diagonal into a long “silkworm-head and swallow-tail” stroke.

Another example, 



The small seal-script and clerical-script forms look almost unrelated.

To understand, compare with earlier scripts:

• The shell bone script form (left) depicts a kneeling person with hands crossed over the chest.

• In big seal script (right), the body becomes a vertical curve, and the hands are represented by crossing horizontals in front.

Small seal script

• In small seal script, symmetry is emphasized—the left arm was extended downward to balance the right, making the figure look stylized. 

Now, let see the clerical script, if we rotate the clerical-script “女”, left below, 90 degrees clockwise, we get the right one below, we can see the relationship:



The right vertical of clerical script corresponds to the right arc of small seal script, and the crossing strokes on the left match the crossed arms. By turning the form sideways, the Han scribes converted vertical lines into long horizontals, which is perfect for a Silkworm Head and Swallow Tail stroke —embodying their bold creativity. 

This radical reworking was widely accepted—from court scribes to commoners—and became the standard. 

The Spirit of the Han Dynasty 

The Han people were open-minded and innovative. They achieved brilliance in many fields, including calligraphy—clerical script reached its peak during the Han dynasty.
That is why the descendants of the Central Plains proudly called themselves Han people - 汉族, their writing Han characters - 汉字, and their language Han speech - 汉语. The Han (and later the Tang) was truly among China’s greatest dynasties, giving later generations pride in being “Han.”

Decline of Innovation

We have just seen how clerical script revolutionized small seal script—a historical leap.
But modern Chinese people no longer possess that courage or boldness. We’ve grown conservative, afraid to deviate even slightly. As a result, after the emergence of regular script (kaishu), Chinese calligraphy ceased to evolve.

For language, that stability isn’t bad.
But for the art of calligraphy, it led to stagnation—a creative dead end.

A Personal Anecdote

Around 2012, when I was teaching Chinese at the Huaxia Chinese School in New Jersey, I once took part in a Peking opera performance organized by the Confucius Institute at Rutgers University.

I called the institute to ask whether they needed Chinese teachers. The program coordinator, an older lady, told me she preferred “standard Chinese” and opposed any deviation from standard forms. When I asked what she meant by “standard,” she said: “Song typeface.”

Later I emailed her samples of my work—studies on pictographic origins and pictographic calligraphy—but she never replied. Then I understood: in her eyes, I was a heretic for not using “standard” Song type.

To her, “standard Chinese” meant not only Song typeface, but simplified Song typeface. Ancient scripts like shell bone, bronze, or seal script were, to her, not “real Chinese.”

But who decides what “standard Chinese” is?
Is it the ancient ancestors who created the characters—or modern people who only recognize simplified forms?

As the proverb says, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” That lady, with her half-bucket of knowledge, was nonetheless full of self-confidence.

If the ancients could return today and see simplified Song characters, would they still recognize them as “Chinese characters”?

Conclusion 

The slender grace of small seal script and the flat boldness of clerical script both arose naturally from changes in writing materials—from narrow bamboo slips to wide paper sheets—and also from psychological liberation.

The clerical transformation was a rebellion against the constraints of the bamboo medium.
Over time, that rebellious spirit calmed, and with the advent of regular script, writing returned to balance—neither too tall nor too wide. Characters became truly square, regular, and standardized.

That made the language more consistent—but it also meant that calligraphy lost much of its distinctive vitality and artistic tension.

In short

The shapes of Chinese characters evolved not merely from artistic choice, but from the physical and psychological freedom of their writers—narrow slips bred slender forms, while broad paper invited sweeping horizontals.

 

Written in Feb. 1^st, 2025