According to the study of excavations in China, Chinese characters appeared in New Stone Age. The development of Chinese characters divided into two periods. The first period is from carapace-bone-script to small seal script, and another period is from clerical script which appeared during Qin and Han Dynasties to simplified Chinese charaters. The writing systems in first period are belong to Ancient character category, and the other writing systems are belong to modern time category. Generally speaking, the serveral characters in the second period are less different than each others.

The Development of Characters

Carapace-bone-script is mainly mean the script which is found in Yin Dynasty ruins. It is used to record and divine on turtleback or animal’s bone by royal during the Yin Dynasty. We learn that the contents which are recorded with carapace bone script are rich from the 150 thousand bones and turtlebacks found so far. The bones records the serciety life, including culture, tradition, politics, military, astronomy, law and medicine.

Inscriptions on Bronze is the characters engraved on bronze, and it is also called “Inscriptions on ancient bronze objects”. Since the Xia Dynasty, ancient China came into the bronze time. And the bronze was widely used during Yin Dynasty and Zhou Dynasty. Meanwhile, inscription was found on bronze everywhere. The contents on bronze are mainly about the great achievement of ancestors and royals, and also includes the important events.

Large Seal Script appeard in the last years of Western Zhou Dynasty. And the people engraved on drum shaped stone blocks with large seal script during the period of Spring and Autumn and Warring States.

Small Seal Script is also called Qin seal script. When the first emperor of Qin Dynasty(Qin Shi Huang) united the China, he authorized Li Si, the ancient term for secretary of states, to unit the characters. Li Si canceled the use of characters of other six states and forced the whole emper to use the same script which is simplified large seal script. Small seal script was used popularly in ancient China. It was not until Western Han Dynasty that small seal script was replaced by clerical script. The reason why small seal script was popular used is maily about its complication strokes of characters and strange shape, and this unique properties was just perfect used on anti-fake seal. The official seals were designed with small seal script until the feudal society ended and the new anti-fake techonology arose.

Clerical Script is almost evolved from small seal script. Its characters’ shape are more quadrate than the small seal script’s round shape, and the writng spead is apparently higher. It is the simplified version of small seal script for more easy and fast to write. Clerical script was popular used in Han Dynasty. The appearance of clerical script is a big change in Chinese characters and Chinese writing. This change bring the Chinese writing art to a new stage, and it is a turning point of developtment of Chinese Characters.

Regular Script appeard in East Han Dynasty. It is the later generation of clerial script and keep the main characteristics of clerial script. Its shape is more quadrate and it can be wrote faster than clerical script. In Tang Dynasty, regular script had got a great achievement as the empire did. The characters of regular script became mature and many calligraphers made lots of great works.

Running Script is also a generation of clerical script. It has the adventure of writing speed than regular script and the adventure of identification than cursive hand which is almost irregular.

Cursive Hand is the most irregular writing system. It is famous from its fast writing speed and irregular form of characters.

 

Traditional Chinese Character

The modern shapes of traditional Chinese characters first appeared with the arising of the clerical script during the Han dynasty, and have been stable during the Southern and Northern Dynasties (the 5th century). The later period of Qing dynasty and Republic of China period are the golden time of Traditional Chinese Character.

Traditional Chinese character is now currently used in Taiwan (Republic of China), Hong Kong and Macau. It was also used in mainland China before the People's Republic of China published the Simplified Chinese character. Besides, in overseas Chinese communities other than Singapore and Malaysia, traditional character is most commonly used in overseas Chinese communities. Meanwhile, a lot of overseas Chinese online websites allow users to switch the words between both two Chinese characters.

 

Simplified Chinese Character

This Chinese character is mainly used in mainland China. In 1956, Chinese government published the Simplified Chinese character and made it into practice. Simplifying is primary tendency of change in the history of Chinese character development. The truth of Simplified Chinese character is that most of the simplified Chinese characters have appeared since ancient time. Simplified Chinese character exists in all the types of Chinese character, including Carapace-bone-script, Seal script, Clerical script and Regular script. About Ninety percent of Simplified Chinese character comes from calligraphy works which were written by many famous calligraphers of China.

 

The Advantages of Chinese Character are that it can record information and knowledge for a long time and meanwhile it still can be understood mostly by Chinese later generations. After 2000 years, the forms of Chinese Character did not make great changes and so did the meanings of Chinese Characters. That is why the Chinese people nowadays can still understand ancient books in the Qin dynasty and the Han dynasty. It breaks the limitation of time and space, and transmits all the information of ancient China.

Here are the Chinese Characters "唐" (It means Tang Dynasty) in different forms:

Carapace-bone-script

Inscriptions on Bronze

Large Seal Script

Small Seal Script

Clerical Script

Regular Script

Running Script

Cursive Hand