Calligraphy in China

The Aryans came to India from Asia. If you were to put your finger on India, on your map, and then move it up to the north, you would be in Asia. And if you move your finger right on the map, you’ll go into the eastern part of Asia—China.

Pictograms were picture-words that looked almost exactly like the words they represented.

But as Chinese writing continued to develop, pictograms looked less and less like the words they stood for. In later Chinese writing, you can often still see a picture. But the picture is harder to find. This kind of Chinese writing is called calligraphy, and the pictures are called characters. Here are some modern Chinese characters. Do they look like the words they stand for?

Mountain (can you see the peaks of the mountain?)

Fire (can you see the flames leaping up?)

Man (he has two sets of arms!)

Horse (does this look like a horse to you?)

Writing Chinese characters is more like drawing a picture than writing a word. Chinese calligraphers—people who spent many years learning how to write in Chinese—used seven different kinds of lines to write their characters. They called these lines the “Seven Mysteries.” The first three lines are easy:

Can you draw these lines?

The next three lines that belong to the Seven Mysteries are a little more difficult:

Downward Stroke 1: This line is like a mountain slope.

Downward Stroke 2: This line has a little point at the top.

Sweeping Downward Stroke: This line goes the other way!

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Can you draw these three lines? The very last line is a Hook that can be drawn two different ways:

Chinese calligraphers put these lines together to form Chinese characters. This character, for “field,” uses three Horizontal Lines and three Vertical Lines:

It represents a farmer’s field. Can you see the rows in the field?

Here is a character that uses a Vertical Line, a Horizontal Line, a Downward Stroke, and a Sweeping Downward Stroke. Can you guess what it is?

It’s a tree. The Chinese word for “forest” is three trees, put together like this:

Now let’s look at one last character. It uses a Horizontal Line, a Sweeping Downward Stroke, and a Hook:

This is the character for “Woman.” It is supposed to look like a mother with a baby on her lap. Do you see anything that looks like a baby? Remember, Chinese characters aren’t the same as pictures. Sometimes it is very difficult to see a picture in them.

In ancient China, calligraphy was done with a special sharp paintbrush, made out of animal hairs. Calligraphers made their own brushes by tying the hairs together into a little bundle with a silk thread. Then they glued the hairs into the end of a tube made out of a tiny piece of bamboo.

Painting each Chinese character took a long, long time. Can you imagine writing a whole book this way? Eventually, the Chinese people decided to find a quicker way to write books. They carved their characters into blocks of wood. First, the calligrapher would write the character on the block of wood. Then, a craftsman would carve away the wood from around the character, so that it stood out. Then the calligrapher would coat the raised Chinese character with ink, turn the wood block over, and press it down on a piece of paper. Now he could copy the character over and over in seconds, just by dipping the wood into ink and pressing it down.

This process is called “printing.” With printing, books can be made quickly and cheaply. The Chinese were the first ancient people to use printing. The oldest printed book in the world is a Chinese book called the Diamond Sutra. It was printed over a thousand years ago, but we can still read it today!