- this is the most ancient type of writing on our planet, which not only survived until today, but also occupies one of the leading places among the most common languages ​​in the world. The emergence and evolution of Chinese writing became the impetus for the development of the civilization of the ancient Chinese, and also had an active influence on the formation of the cultural values ​​of China and even the whole world. The unique complex of graphic signs and drawings was created more than 6000 years ago.

When reading any Chinese text or book, the question arises of what the hieroglyphs mean, how to translate them. Not even a single Chinese knows how many exactly there are hieroglyphs in the Chinese language.

The total number of Chinese characters is about 50 thousand, but 4-7 thousand characters are practically used. The outline of a hieroglyph is made up of standard features (from one to 28), repeated in various combinations.

Complex hieroglyphs are a combination of simple characters, of which there are about 300. Most of the rare hieroglyphs denote ancient narrow professional terms, various nationalities, tool details, etc.

Facts about Chinese writing in hieroglyphs

Chinese characters are the official script of the People's Republic of China (PRC), the Republic of China (Taiwan Island), Hong Kong (now Hong Kong - a special autonomous region of the PRC), one of the official scripts of Singapore (Chinese is one of the official languages ​​of the UN). Chinese writing is also common in Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Burma, Malaysia and Thailand, where the Chinese are a compact minority. To a limited extent and partly in a modified form, the Chinese script is used in Japan and South Korea. Until 1910, Chinese characters were official in Vietnam.

Traditionally, Chinese characters were written from right to left in vertical columns (like Mongolian writing) . The first publication with a horizontal direction of lines from left to right is R. Morrison's dictionary of the Chinese language, published in Macau in 1815-23.

Over time, this line direction has become more popular. Since 1949, the horizontal direction of the lines has become standard in the PRC, and by 1956 all newspapers in mainland China were printed this way, although some headlines (or text on signs) are still written vertically.

In 1990, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau and overseas Chinese communities moved to the horizontal direction. Vertical writing remains popular in Taiwan, although horizontal writing is becoming more common there.

The history of the emergence of hieroglyphs

“Cang Jie invented hieroglyphs, on this occasion the sky showered the earth with millet, and evil spirits sobbed all night long, ”the legend says so.

It is still not known exactly when the Chinese characters originated. There is evidence that this happened during the Yin Dynasty (1401-1122 BC), but there is also a legend that Chinese characters were invented by the historiographer of the heavenly Emperor Huangdi named Cang Jie four thousand years ago.

The most ancient hieroglyphs were written on tortoise shells and bull bones. They are called "jiaguwen", which literally means "text on the shell and bones." Then, after the advent of bronze melting technology, Chinese characters began to be written on bronze vessels. They were called "jinwen", which means "text on bronze".

Scientists managed to find a lot of turtle shells with the first writing. The fact is that during the reign shang dynasty there was a certain tradition, one might say a rite, which was used immediately before the adoption of an extremely responsible decision in the sphere of governing the people and the state as a whole.

Before starting the ceremony, the turtle shell had to be carefully processed: cleaned, washed and polished. Further responsible for carrying out ancient rite was supposed to be on a specially prepared turtle shell in a strictly defined order inflict several blows that left indentations, as well as an inscription consisting of several characters ,which subsequently turned into Chinese characters.

This inscription contained a specific question to which one could get an unambiguous answer. After the question was formulated and applied, the fortuneteller set fire to the recesses in the shell with a stick made of bronze. After such a ritual, cracks formed on the back of the shell, according to which the ancient Chinese determined the result of divination and the answer to their question. When the ritual ended, all the turtle shells were folded in a certain place and kept as official government documents. It was some ancient archive.

Writing on tortoise shells is considered to be an established and mature system of ancient writing, it was they who became the basis for the subsequent development of hieroglyphs in China.

During the development of hieroglyphic writing, various styles began to appear. calligraphy , such as: zhuan, lishu, xing, cao, kai, etc. Subsequently, calligraphy turned into a kind of art with its own strict rules. For example, each hieroglyph must strictly fit into a square of a given size, the lines of the hieroglyph must be strictly written from top to bottom and from left to right, horizontal lines are written first, and then vertical ones, etc.

Next to the figure, you can trace the order of writing the features on the example of the Chinese character "wisdom" (huì - hui).

Basic graphic elements of Chinese characters

Each hieroglyph consists of a certain number of graphic elements (all of them over 200). As a rule, these elements by themselves do not carry any semantic load. Combinations of graphic elements written in a certain sequence are called graphemes. A grapheme can be used as an independent simple Chinese character, or as part of a complex one.
The basic graphic elements of the Chinese character are:

• horizontal bar
• vertical bar
• dot
• tilting to the left
• hook
• tilting to the right
• ascending line
• broken line

Derivatives are formed from these simplest elements: for example, a thrice broken horizontal line.

Rules for writing Chinese character elements :

The writing tool should move from left to right if we are writing a horizontal stroke, and from top to bottom if we are writing a vertical or oblique stroke. First of all, we write the vertical, then the horizontal. First, a folding line to the left is written, after that - a folding line to the right. First - the sides of the hieroglyph, then - the middle. The last dot is to the right.

What is a hieroglyph

Chinese characters are some kind of ideographs, that is, symbols that contain an idea or meaning, they are the basis of Chinese writing and speech. At this stage of development, there are up to 10 thousand hieroglyphs, among them the number of the most common and most frequently used is 3 thousand. These symbols are enough to make up many different phrases and sentences.

Chinese characters are living characters, they, like people, grow old, they can be forgotten, new ones are found to replace obsolete characters, some disappear from use forever.

They carry a deep meaning and even the wisdom of the ages. This explains the use of many hieroglyphs as symbols in the teachings Feng Shui. You will meet them on souvenirs, figurines, cars, clothes, many make themselves tattoos with the image of beneficial hieroglyphs. If you sincerely believe in the power of hieroglyphs, they will certainly help in fulfilling your most cherished desires.

The hieroglyphics of China became the basis and had a considerable influence on the formation of writing in China. neighboring countries such as Korea, Japan, Vietnam. Many Chinese characters are used in their speech.

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The exact time of the birth of Chinese writing is still unknown. A bizarre geometric ornament on ceramic vessels discovered in the 20s of the 20th century in the Yangshao village of Henan province, made 5-7 thousand years ago, may be the beginnings of ancient Chinese writing.

Ornament on ceramic vessels ancient culture Yangshao.

Tradition attributes the idea of ​​creating hieroglyphs to one of the mythical "Three Lords" of Chinese antiquity - Fu Xi, who, according to legend, ruled the Celestial Empire from 2852 to 2737 BC. e. According to the myth, Emperor Fu Xi, walking along the banks of the Yellow River, saw a dragon appear from the river waters, on the back of which distinct signs appeared. The inquisitive emperor immediately copied them. The signs looked like bird footprints on a sandbank. Having comprehended the meaning of the pattern, Fu Xi drew eight trigrams - combinations of three solid and intermittent lines, from which the Chinese hieroglyphics originate.

The creation of hieroglyphs as a writing system is associated with the name of another legendary ruler of the Celestial Empire, the founding father of the Chinese Empire in the 25th century BC. e., the great Yellow Emperor - Huang Di, according to legend, who ruled for 100 years from 2591 to 2491 BC. e.. Emperor Huang Di ordered his court official Cang Jie to create the first system of Chinese writing, who, having subjected the traces of birds and animals to a deep study, invented the first hieroglyphs. The oldest monuments of a systematic and relatively mature Chinese writing are considered to be the inscriptions on animal bones and turtle shells - jiaguwen, dating back to the Shang-Yin era, and the inscriptions on ritual bronze vessels - jinwen, dating from the Yin-Shan period (in Chinese historiography, the period of the Shan dynasty is determined from 1751 to 1112 BC).

Jiaguwen - divinatory inscriptions carved on tortoise shells, bull or deer shoulder blades.

These inscriptions appeared in the same historical period as the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the American Mayan script, and the Sumerian cuneiform. In these ancient writings, such a characteristic feature of Chinese writing as the location of the hieroglyph in the space of an imaginary square is already noticeable. In the combination of features and elements of hieroglyphs in jiaguwen inscriptions, a distinction can be traced into upper-lower, left-right, spaced-connected; crossing, crossing, repeating, layering, framing are used. The characters are arranged in a line vertically, from top to bottom, if the inscription consists of several lines, they are read from right to left. This order of writing was preserved in China for three millennia. As evidenced by the Jiaguwen inscriptions, the creators of Chinese archaic writing had an inherent desire for aesthetics.

Jinwen- inscriptions made on ritual bronze (an alloy of copper and tin) - bowls, cups and vessels used during feasts, weapons, musical instruments and mirrors. The number of hieroglyphs of one inscription varies from one or two to several hundred, the vocabulary is almost 3,000 independent hieroglyphs, of which 2,000 have been identified. than the ancient writings of jiaguwen, they have a stronger desire for the beauty of structure and composition, both individual hieroglyphs and lines.

Fuchai sword.

In the second half of the Zhou era, during the Zhangguo (Warring States) period, in many fragmented kingdoms, the process of simplifying the ancient style of writing Zhuanshu (Dazhuan) began, many varieties and variants of its writing appeared. At the end of the III century BC. e., the emperor of the Qin empire - Qin Shi Huang carried out a writing reform: he banned the circulation of all non-Qin variants of the writing of the six kingdoms he destroyed, simplified and unified the writing of hieroglyphs and introduced the country-wide writing style xiaozhuan - "small seal" - a direct descendant of the "large print."

The initiator of the transition to the Xiaozhuan style was the first Chancellor of the Qin Empire, Li Si (? -208 BC), who opens the first page of the history of famous Chinese calligraphers. Li Si's work is still considered an unsurpassed example of the Xiaozhuan style.

The inscription is in the handwriting of the Qin Imperial Chancellor Li Si.

The creation in China of the first centralized state - the Qin dynasty, noticeably intensified the exchange of written dispatches and expanded cultural and information contacts between different parts of the empire. On the one hand, this provided an objective reason to make the letter faster and simpler, on the other hand, it caused a desire to “embellish” it. Thus, one after another, numerous cursive and non-statutory variants of the Xiaozhuan style appeared, which were later united under the common name Caozhuan. The calligraphic style of this period was called - guli - an ancient business letter.

Ghouli-style writing on bamboo tablets.

In the subsequent development of the Zhuanshu style, the rules for writing hieroglyphs established in it were often violated - the thickness and length of the lines changed, and attempts were made to write freely. Some calligraphers limited themselves to extending the line to the right, lengthening the vertical line and the hook. More daring - represented the horizontal line in a completely new form. She was called - tsantou-yanwei - "the head of a silkworm - the tail of a wild goose." The hieroglyph consisted of a horizontal line, where the extreme left part of the line - the “head” - was written in bold, with special pressure, and the extreme right part - the “tail” of the line - was slightly bent upwards.

The horizontal line heng in the form of tsantou-yanwei - "the head of a silkworm - the tail of a wild goose"; lose style.

If the hieroglyph consisted of two or three parallel horizontal lines, then the lower (last) one was written as tsantou-yanwei, and the rest - in straight lines, slightly shorter than the last one. These innovations found support among a growing number of calligraphers and eventually gave birth to a new calligraphic style, different from the ghouls - lish.

Fragment of an inscription from the Stele of Shi Chen; din. Eastern Han

The final formation of the Lishu style - "business writing", the second fundamental style of Chinese writing after Zhuanshu, refers to the period of the Eastern Han Dynasty. Along with the spread of the lishu style, guided by the requirements of simplicity, beauty, and fashion, calligraphers continued to develop various new writing options based on it. The horizontal stroke in the form of cantou-yanwei was abandoned due to the complexity of writing, but a thickened dash to the right immediately came into fashion. The calligraphy of that period is characterized by simple and unconstrained, smooth and graceful, often intertwined features, but retaining their individuality, hieroglyphs. This style of writing was called zhangcao (“statutory herbal writing”), was widespread in the 3rd-4th centuries, but later it was addressed less and less.

Fragment of an inscription in zhangcao style

Simultaneously with the zhangcao style, the jincao ("modern herbal") style appeared, which, however, is not a direct variety of zhangcao. The founders of jintsao are ghuli and lishu styles. The main difference between the two cursive styles is that in the Zhangcao style, the characters are spaced apart, and some lines are written with a stop, the skill and strength of the brush dominates, while in the Jincao style, the characters are in contact, the lines are written without stopping, and naturalness dominates.

Another variation of the lishu style is the xingshu style (“running” or “running letter”), an everyday style of writing. The hieroglyphs of the Xingshu style are easily distinguishable, the lines of the features are simple, flexible and uninhibited.

Wang Xun. Xingcao style work "Dedicated to Bo Yuan" (Bo Yuan te)

Simultaneously with the varieties of the lishu style, kaishu ("exemplary writing") was born - the style that is most widely used in modern written Chinese. Kaishu is the third and final fundamental style of Chinese writing, and has maintained the status of "official" for over 1,300 years.

After the proclamation of the People's Republic of China, by order of the government, the writing of hieroglyphs was simplified both in handwritten and printed form. In case of different spellings, only one official spelling was assigned to the hieroglyph. Along with this, the order of writing also changed: if earlier the hieroglyphs were arranged in vertical columns from right to left, then after the reform they were already written in a horizontal line - from left to right. Of course, all these innovations, aimed at facilitating mass reading and writing, did not affect the art of calligraphy.

Through the centuries, Chinese writing has evolved into a highly revered art form known throughout the world as Chinese calligraphy. Calligraphy- a beautiful flower of Chinese society, an outstanding heritage of world culture. Calligraphy embodied the essence of oriental culture and the beauty of oriental art. This art is the pride of the Chinese people. One of the foundations of world art history.

Calligraphy is considered one of the treasures of Chinese culture. The art of calligraphy is not only a practical embodiment of Chinese writing or a tool for conveying information, but also a unique means of expression. spiritual world calligraphy masters.

Calligraphy serves as a means of conveying emotions, aesthetic views, moral qualities and character of a master of calligraphy.
"The structure of the hieroglyph, its appearance can create a wide variety of impressions - a hieroglyph can seem to stand still, or walk, or fly; move, then, as if moving away from us, then, on the contrary, approaching; he can, as it were, calmly lie in a slumber or, waking up, get up; the hieroglyph can be sad or, on the contrary, cheerful, it can convey the rhythms of either spring, or summer, or autumn, or winter; it may look like a tree eaten by beetles, or like a sharp blade of a knife or spear ...; a hieroglyph can resemble the movement of jets of water or flames, the movement of clouds or haze, and finally, the play of sunlight or moonlight ... "

From the treatise of Cai Yong (the beginning of a new era), translated by S.N. Sokolov-Remizov.

Chinese characters are characters that do not make up the alphabet. This is a writing system in which each character represents either a complete one-syllable word or a one-syllable part of a word. This letter is also called logographic. Each character has its own pronunciation. In order to be able to read Chinese, it is necessary to memorize about 4,000 characters. Fortunately, it is not necessary to study Chinese for a long time to appreciate the beauty of its writing.

Frequently used Chinese characters have from 10 to 30 lines (strokes). It is recommended to follow a certain order in their writing to ensure speed, accuracy and readability of the composition. Strokes (or strokes) in Chinese characters are divided into 8 main categories: horizontal stroke, vertical stroke, left slant, right slant, rising stroke, dot, hook, curved stroke. The "Eight Principles of Yong" explains how to write strokes that are found in Chinese characters. The hieroglyph "yong" is translated as "forever" or "eternity".

The main material elements of the art of calligraphy are the ink stick, ink stone, writing brush and paper. All of them are combined into one concept, which is known as the Four Cabinet Treasures. These four writing instruments have been used by artists in various periods of Chinese history, from ancient times to the present day. A writing brush can be made from the feather or hair of various animals - wolf, rabbit, deer, chickens, ducks, goats, pigs and tigers.

It was customary for artists to use their signature or seal to leave their name on an oil painting, calligraphy sample, text with a poem or story, documents and letters. Ancient Chinese seals are a stylized image of the artist's name, skillfully engraved on a wooden or bone surface. The hieroglyphs for seals are very elegant in form. Today they have not lost their popularity. Even today they are often used by masters of calligraphy in their works.

Traditionally, Chinese characters are written in vertical columns - from top to bottom; the first column is located on the right side of the sheet, and the text is written on the left side.

Paper (lined for beginners). Character sample (sometimes with a beginner-friendly grid) The starting point of the letter. Place for printing (name of the author, date and seal of the author)

Most scripts known to the world have only two or three standard and cursive writing styles, while Chinese calligraphy has about 10 styles.

Three of them are still widely used in everyday life, two more have already gone out of wide use, but continue to live in calligraphic art.

Kaishu- exemplary letter. The kaishu style is the standard style, the main style of modern Chinese character writing. Typographic and computer fonts mainly use characters of this style.

Liu Yun. Fragment of text in kaishu style.

The main characteristics of this style are: standard (uniformity) and strict order of strokes, a rather slow pace of writing. The hieroglyphs made in this style are easily distinguishable. In Chinese calligraphy, the kaishu style is most often used on formal occasions. In this style, the names of books and newspapers, business papers, New Year's paired inscriptions are written, inscriptions are made on shop signs, memorial plaques on buildings, tombstones, monuments and steles.

Xingshu- "running" or "running letter". Modern style Xingshu is one of the cursive styles based on kaishu, considered intermediate between standard kaishu and caoshu cursive.

The main characteristics of the style: the combination of a dot and another line is written without lifting the hand, the hieroglyphs are made at a rather large slope, they are distinguished by smoothness, smoothness, grace, and are clearly distinguishable. Kaishu is most commonly used in everyday writing and epistolary genre.

Caoshu- "herbal letter". The caoshu style is the main cursive style, it has gone much further from the main standard kaishu than the cursive xingshu. In the caoshu style, either the form of the normative hieroglyph of the kaishu style is modified, or the features of the hieroglyph are intertwined into a single script. Some features and elements of a character may even be deliberately omitted, so caoshu characters are difficult to both write and distinguish.

Yu Ren. Paired inscriptions in the caoshu style.

Zhuanshu- “ancient seal” and lishu - “scribe” or “business letter”, have already gone out of everyday use. In the Zhuanshu style, the oldest inscriptions on oracle bones of animals and tortoise shells - jiaguwen and inscriptions on ritual bronze vessels - jingwen were made. The zhuanshu style is characterized by the least number of features: it lacks a dot, a hook, and a broken line. Another feature of the style is the same thickness of all features.

At Changshuo. Zhuanshu style work recreating the inscription on ancient stone drums.

Style deprive- "scribal or business writing", which arose after the Zhuanshu style, formed the basis of modern Chinese writing. From the Han Dynasty, around the middle of the 1st century BC, Lishu becomes the dominant writing style for all business papers. Graphically, it marks the transition from lines of the same thickness to lines of different thicknesses, and compositionally it differs from the archaic zhuanshu by a noticeable simplification of writing due to the reduction or complete rejection of the previous pictographic and ideographic components of the hieroglyph, however, it still differs in lesser variability in the forms of features than kaishu. Another visual graphic feature of the lishu is the horizontally flattened image of signs, unlike other styles, the signs of which tend to be more elongated vertically. Lishu style is characterized by the manner of ancient writing, but at the same time, the hieroglyphs of this style are clearly distinguishable.

Qian Shoute. Lishu style work.

But, the basis of the highest status of the art of Chinese calligraphy does not lie in external beauty. Since ancient times, writing has been understood as part of the world pattern of things (wen). It was believed that the signs of hieroglyphic writing followed the inexhaustible variety of nature, or the variety of movements, metamorphoses in the natural world, and beauty (thought both natural and created by man) consisted in the originality of every nuance of the boundless "pattern" of the universe. The famous treatise of the 5th century “The Carved Dragon of Literary Thought” says: “Look around at the myriad of creatures - both animals and plants are covered with a pattern. The dragon and the phoenix are a good omen with their luxuriant colors. The tiger and leopard are recognized by their spots and stripes. It happens that the colored ligature of clouds at dawn will shame the skill of the painter, and the graceful flowering of trees and grasses does without the fabrications of weavers. So is it really just an external decoration - no, this is their nature ... If unreasonable creatures are endowed with brilliance to such an extent, could a person really not have writing - a receptacle of the heart?

Writing in the eyes of the ancient Chinese was not a reflection of objects, but of their "shadows and traces", that is, an act of transformation of being, which reveals the limit of all things. Writing received the status of an independent reality abstracted from physical prototypes and was recognized as a powerful tool for harmonizing nature and culture, the nature of things and human creativity. As one of the calligraphers of the 18th century wrote: “The first among the arts, calligraphy reflects metamorphoses, reveals the innermost, attaches to the eternal; accompanies the beating of the heart, expresses the soul, carries the culture of the master, polishes the culture of the word, creates a new one; being a response, conceals a call, being a call, conceals a response.

The deep essence of writing is an expression of the world element, the eternal movement, endlessly changing ratios and connections of two principles: the masculine yang - firm, strong, aspiring upward, heavenly, creative, and the feminine yin - soft, flexible, pliable, gentle, dark, earthly, full desire for fulfillment and self-giving, directed downwards. It is no coincidence that the human body, in which the interaction of these two forces occurs most visibly, integral in its structure and simultaneously consisting of many elements, has become the prototype of the plastic forms of Chinese calligraphy. If the Chinese doctor approached the human body as a system of energy circulations of yin and yang forces, then the calligrapher, distinguishing the backbone, veins, blood, muscles in the structure of the hieroglyph, saw the action of the same polar forces of yin and yang.

The clash and harmony of two opposite principles constitute the hidden potential of each work of calligraphic art. It is easiest for an inexperienced eye to visually catch this interaction of opposites by looking at how black and white, the two main colors that the master of writing deals with, agree in calligraphic strokes. In Chinese tradition, black is associated with yin and white is associated with yang. In calligraphy instructions, it was invariably emphasized: "Calculate the white, measure the black." Black color denotes the deep, sacred secrets of being, the endless potency of forms. White color is associated with primordial purity, the reality of existence and its death. Harmonizing black and white is the basis of calligraphic aesthetics.

How many characters are there in Chinese and what does the Chinese keyboard look like?

There are 7 dialect groups in Chinese: Northern (北, the most numerous - over 800 million speakers), Wu (吴), Xiang (湘), Gan (赣), Hakka (客家), Yue (粤), Ming (闽) . The dialects differ phonetically (which makes interdialect communication difficult, although the dialects are connected by regular sound correspondences), vocabulary, and partly grammar, but the basics of their grammar and vocabulary are the same. The medium of communication between speakers of different dialects is the normative Chinese language, which in China is called putonghua (普通话), and in other countries - goyu (国语), there are very slight differences between them. If necessary, you can explain yourself by writing hieroglyphs on paper or by drawing them in the air with your hand. The literary language is based on northern dialects. The phonetic norm is Beijing pronunciation (however, in the era of the Tang Dynasty, when most of the classical Chinese texts were created, the norm was closer to the current Hakka dialect group).
In Chinese writing, each character stands for a separate syllable and a separate morpheme. The total number of Chinese characters exceeds 40,000 (sometimes the figure is 70,000 characters). Most of the characters can be found only in the monuments of classical Chinese literature. A person who has mastered 1500 signs can be considered literate at an elementary level. 3000 characters are enough to read newspapers and non-specialized magazines.

Currently, Chinese characters exist in 2 versions: simplified, adopted in mainland China, and traditional - in Taiwan, Hong Kong and other countries.

Chinese is considered one of the oldest existing languages. In addition, Chinese writing is the oldest of those systems that continue to be used to this day.

Basics of Chinese Writing

The main difference between Chinese writing is that it does not consist of letters, but of hieroglyphs. To write a Chinese word, you need as many characters as there are syllables in it. Each character is a separate syllable and a separate morpheme. The total number of characters exceeds 80 thousand, but most of them can be found only in the works of classical Chinese literature, that is, most of them, namely about 70 thousand characters, are not used by average native speakers.

For a comfortable everyday life in China, it is enough to master 3000 - 5000 most frequently used (frequency) characters, having mastered such a vocabulary, you can read newspapers and non-professional magazines, calmly buy groceries in a store, place an order in a cafe and be considered a confident Internet user. By the word "master" the author means the ability to read and write a specific hieroglyph, to distinguish it in the text.

Features of Chinese writing

Chinese characters are, roughly speaking, schematic simplified drawings (yes, in those ancient times, people, for obvious reasons, could not come up with anything more complicated).

For example, the most common Chinese character for "one" and the most complex character is biáng, which consists of 57 strokes.

One of the most difficult biang characters

Hieroglyphs consist of graphemes - individual simplified elements, of which there are about 316 in total, and graphemes consist of features - from 1 to 24 in one grapheme. The assimilation of graphemes helps to master the writing of hieroglyphs easier and faster.

Chinese Keys

We should also mention key elements or, as they are usually called, keys. A key is a graphic element (grapheme) or a simple hieroglyph with a specific meaning. Being an integral part of a complex hieroglyph, the key acts as a semantic indicator, indicating to which sphere the given hieroglyph belongs.

There are 214 key signs in total. Knowing the keys simplifies the study of hieroglyphs, and also suggests its meaning, which is very convenient, because you can guess the meaning of a word without resorting to a dictionary. To date, there are 2 options for writing Chinese characters.

• simplified (the number of strokes is reduced to a minimum), such hieroglyphs are used by the inhabitants of mainland China;
• traditional (in its original complex form), this option is common in Hong Kong, Taiwan and some other countries.

Literally until recently, the Chinese wrote hieroglyphs from top to bottom, and the columns went from right to left. Now in China they mostly write horizontally, from left to right, as in European languages; vertical writing continues to be used in Taiwan along with horizontal writing. However, in mainland China, vertical writing and pre-reform hieroglyphics (traditional, full forms characters) are still used as a reference to traditional Chinese culture.

The study of writing

Now the most difficult question: how to learn and remember at least 3000 Chinese characters and use them in writing. The answer is terribly simple and banal: only by hard work, writing several pages every day, and preferably notebooks with hieroglyphs, reading various texts, invent and write down small essays, in general, try to use the learned words to the maximum so that they are firmly entrenched in your head.

Anyone interested in studying hieroglyphics, I recommend that you read the book Storozhuk "Introduction to Chinese Characters". In that study guide contains very detailed information about the rules for writing basic keys. In the manual "Introduction to Hieroglyphics" Kondrashevsky, the theoretical component of the foundations of Chinese characters is very well described.

Chinese writing

Chinese hieroglyphic writing is an exceptional phenomenon among modern writing systems. This is the only hieroglyphic writing in the world, which was invented one and a half millennia BC. e. and continues to exist today. Hieroglyphic scripts, which were invented in almost all centers of ancient civilizations - in the Middle East, South Asia, China, Central America, have disappeared, leaving behind few monuments. And only Chinese hieroglyphic writing throughout its history has been able to adapt to the changing conditions of the development of Chinese civilization and remain a complex, but acceptable writing tool for China.

The sign of the Chinese letter is a complex graphic figure. Its Chinese name is tzu - "written sign" in European languages ​​it is called character - "sign", in Russian it is called a hieroglyph by analogy with the signs of other hieroglyphic scripts. Accordingly, in Russian, Chinese writing is traditionally called hieroglyphic. The unusual nature of Chinese writing has always aroused the curiosity of both scholars and numerous amateurs. There is a large literature about it, but the scientific study of its history began at the end of the last century after the discovery of the most ancient monuments of Chinese writing. Hieroglyphic writing differs from alphabetical writing not only in the form or degree of complexity of individual characters. Differences are manifested in all properties of the signs of these two types of writing.

Origin of Chinese writing

Considering the origin of Chinese writing, one should distinguish between legend and reality. Such a significant cultural achievement is always correlated in the popular consciousness with the activities of an important cultural hero. The Chinese traditional history of writing begins with the era of the first mythical emperors Fu Xi and Shen Nong, when knotted cords and trigrams, consisting of a combination of whole and broken lines, were used to write messages. Thus, Fu Xi and Shen Nong were not so much the inventors of writing, but the creators of the process of semiosis - the creation of conventional signs to denote real objects.
The first sign system in the history of Chinese culture consisted of two elementary signs, one of which was a whole, and the second - an interrupted straight line. These signs were combined into trigrams - gua with a non-repeating combination of whole and interrupted lines. There were eight such trigrams. Each of them had a certain meaning, which could change depending on the purpose for which these trigrams were used. Trigrams could be combined with each other in pairs. The result of such a combination in non-repeating pairs was 64 hexagrams, which were signs not of an object, but of the situation described in the attached couplet, the meaning of which was interpreted by the soothsayer. This elementary sign system, of course, could not be used to record a message in Chinese, but it was of fundamental importance, because with its help the idea was learned that any message could be encoded using written characters. The task was only to create signs that would have one constant meaning instead of signs that have many situational meanings. From here, there was only one step left to create signs for individual words of the Chinese language. The connection of trigrams with Chinese hieroglyphic writing was well understood by early philologists. Xu Shen wrote in the preface to the dictionary Showen Jiezi: "When Fu Xi became the ruler of the universe, he was the first to create eight trigrams, and Shen Nong used knots on cords for the needs of ruling and transmitting orders." Similar sayings are also found in Yijing, Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu. There are no differences in meaning between them, so it can be assumed that all this information goes back to the same cultural tradition.
Further, according to the myth of the invention of Chinese writing, the era of Emperor Huang Di followed. During his reign, the court historiographer Cang Jie created the current hieroglyphic script. According to the legend, the idea of ​​creating hieroglyphs was suggested by the traces of birds on the coastal sand. Looking at them, he suddenly realized that in order to create a graphic sign denoting an object, it is not at all necessary to draw the object itself: symbol, distinguishable from another conventional sign is quite enough to identify it. The legend says that the hieroglyphs created by Cang Jie were rather conditional images of objects and therefore were called wen "image, ornament". In the future, more complex signs began to be created, consisting of several such drawings. These complex signs are called tzu. The preface to the dictionary "Showen jiezi" says that "the court historiographer of Emperor Huang Di named Cang Jie was the first to create a letter on tablets." The most likely false etymology of the word tzu "written sign" from the word tzu "born", that is, "derived" from several characters, is also given there.
There is another traditional view of the starting point of the history of Chinese writing, also based on the mythological notion of the beginning of the reliable history of China. According to the traditional historical concept, Emperor Huang Di was a real historical person and ruled China in the 26th century. BC e. At the same time, the historiographer Cang Jie served at his court. Accordingly, the invention of Chinese writing also dates back to this time. Proponents of this view of the history of Chinese writing believe that it existed even before Cang Jie, who acted not so much as the creator of a new, but as a reformer of the existing hieroglyphic writing. In defense of this view of the history of Chinese writing, indirect considerations are usually given, however, there is still no direct evidence indicating the existence of writing in that distant historical era.
According to archeology, the early history of Chinese writing begins with incisions on ceramic vessels found in excavations of all the Neolithic cultures of China. A common place on Neolithic pottery where notches are located is the rim or bottom of the vessel.
The incisions on the ceramics of the Neolithic cultures were elementary in form. According to the technique of execution, they were features of a complex shape, applied with a pointed object on unfired ceramic products. However, sometimes there are notches made on fired items. Their form varies from one Neolithic culture to another, and only a small number of simple signs were found to be common to several cultures at the same time.

Historians of Chinese writing tend to regard these notches as its oldest characters. If this is indeed the case, then it is most likely to be suspected that they represent the oldest forms of signs for numerals. The differences in the graphic form and their composition in the character sets of each Neolithic culture individually means that they all had their own script. The limited number of signs allowed some researchers to assume that the Neolithic writing was alphabetic. A special place among the incisions belonging to different Neolithic cultures belongs to the incisions of the Dawenkou culture, Shandong Province. According to the results of radiocarbon analysis, the sites of this culture date back to the third and even fifth millennium BC. e. Signs on ceramics of the Dawenkou culture are more complex compared to signs of other both synchronous and later Neolithic cultures. According to their graphic features, they are drawings quite similar to the depicted object. This similarity suggests that they were the earliest pictograms of Chinese writing. From this, it was also concluded that Chinese writing has origins dating not to the middle of the second, but to the middle of the fifth millennium BC.
Archaeological studies of later eras of the history of the material culture of China showed that at the beginning of the second millennium BC. on ceramics one can see not single signs, but groups of signs, which in their graphics resemble signs on Yin bones and shells. So, at the site of Wucheng, Jiangxi province, which dates back to the beginning of the second millennium BC. ceramics with notches located in groups of 5-7 characters were found. In some cases, the number of notches can reach twelve. Such groups of characters may well be considered as inscriptions. In terms of their graphics, the incisions are similar to the characters of the Yin script, but it is not possible to identify them with the characters of the Yin or modern Chinese script. These signs can be considered the predecessors of the Yin script or its local forms. None of the supposed inscriptions have been read. Their study is the task of future generations of Chinese paleographers.
Notches on ceramics continued to exist even after the invention of writing. They remain one of the characteristic features of pottery from the later Chunqiu (722 - 481 BC) and Zhangguo (481 - 250 BC) historical periods. The technical differences between incisions and characters are especially evident on pottery from Baijiazhuang and Zhengzhou. Here, on ceramics from the cultural layer of the Zhangguo era, both notches and inscriptions made in hieroglyphs were found. At the same time, it is significant that the notches were made by hand, and the hieroglyphic inscriptions were made with a stamp. The difference in technique is quite understandable: the potters were hardly literate enough to make an inscription on each vessel separately, so for ornamental inscriptions they used a ready-made stamp, and for their technological purposes - notches, the meaning of which was clear to them, but was not essential for users of ceramics. Perhaps some part of ceramics users could read them.
On the ceramics of the Yin period, the distinction between incisions and hieroglyphs was not so distinct. In Xiaotong and Dasykun, where most of the Yin divination bones were found, ceramic vessels with inscriptions were constantly found from the very beginning of the excavations. The signs on these inscriptions can be identified with the signs of the Yin script, but nevertheless, in general, they cannot be read. Some researchers believe that in these late inscriptions, Yin characters are mixed with notches, but the reason for the mixture remains unclear. The same mixed writing, consisting of Yin hieroglyphs and incisions, is found during excavations far beyond the Yin capital on the periphery of the Yin empire, and, perhaps, beyond its borders. In the Maqiao IV cultural layer near Shanghai, which chronologically corresponds to the middle and late Yin period in the Central Plain, ceramics with incised marks and real signs of Yin hieroglyphic writing have been found.
Even the few descriptions of incisions presented here, found on ceramics in excavations of the Neolithic cultures of the Yin and early Zhou times, testify to the long evolution of Chinese writing from the simplest graphic images not directly related to language to signs that convey linguistic units. As you know, the need for writing arises at that level of development of civilization, when stable communication is required in society as in | time as well as in space. To ensure stable communication in space, the invention of a method of transmission was required, and to ensure it in time, the invention of a method of storing information. In both cases, only a letter could do this.
To create writing, both graphic and technical conditions are required. The material on which signs for various purposes were applied must have a surface that would correspond to the capabilities of the chosen writing instrument. As in all other centers of civilization, the first writing instrument in China was a pointed object suitable for drawing fine lines. Accordingly, the writing material had to have a soft surface. As you know, pottery in China has reached a high degree of perfection, Chinese potters had different ways of applying an ornament and, in general, any image on raw and fired products. Therefore, raw or burnt clay was quite an affordable material for writing. However, the most ancient material that has survived to this day is the shoulder blades of large mammals and the shells of turtles. To give the scratched lines more contrast, black dye was used to fill the scratched groove. Existing inscriptions on fortune-telling bones are mostly scratched on the surface of the bone shell and only some of them are applied with ink or in a similar way, all the main elements of the writing technique - an object that serves as a surface for writing, tools for applying written characters, a dye for their clearer selection on the surface - were already present in the technique of Yin writing.
Archaeologists involved in Chinese ceramics of the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, as well as researchers in the history of Chinese writing with with good reason see connections between the notches on the ceramics and the signs of the Yin hieroglyphic writing. To date, many articles have been published where one or another sign on ceramics is identified with the sign of the Yin script. There is also no doubt that the graphics of these signs are genetically related to the ornament and pictorial decoration on the ceramics of that time. In other words, notches, ornaments, and pictorial decor on Neolithic ceramics created the graphic environment in which Yin hieroglyphic writing was formed. With the invention of Yin hieroglyphic writing, notches on ceramics continued to exist as a technical means of pottery production. Thus, signs - notches on Neolithic ceramics, together with ornament and decor, represent prescriptiveness, the graphic environment where signs of writing can appear. All these components of the graphic environment are a necessary step for the creation of real writing, which conveys linguistic units with regular written characters.

Alphabet and hieroglyphs

The graphical difference between hieroglyphic and alphabetic scripts is that the sign of hieroglyphic writing is always more complicated than alphabetic characters, and the number of characters themselves reaches many thousands. In the latest dictionary of the Chinese language, more precisely, Chinese writing, their number reaches 50 thousand. None of the known hieroglyphic scripts had so many units. The example of Chinese writing shows how large the number of characters of hieroglyphic writing can reach with a sufficiently long existence of it. Hieroglyphic scripts also differ from alphabetic scripts by the principle of designation. Alphabetical writing is used to convey units of the expression plan. These units vary in size. Among the known alphabetic scripts, there are those that denote individual phonemes, and scripts that denote whole syllables. However, a common feature of both phonemic and syllabic scripts is that the linguistic units they designate, in principle, do not have their own meaning. Hieroglyphic writing denotes significant linguistic units - words and morphemes. In other words, it directly conveys the plan of the content of linguistic units. These two types of writing are characterized by completely different relationships with the language they transmit. Alphabetical writing is intended for some particular state of one language: without appropriate modifications, it cannot be used for another language or for another state of the same. Hieroglyphic writing, on the contrary, is universal. Theoretically, hieroglyphs can be used to write in any language. In practice, for writing in hieroglyphic writing, isolating slogomorphemic languages ​​are most suitable, where each morpheme is a syllable. This is evidenced by the history of Chinese hieroglyphic writing, as well as the centuries-old experience of using hieroglyphs for Vietnamese and some Thai languages. As the experience of using Chinese characters for writing in Japanese and Korean has shown, the successful use of characters for agglutinating languages ​​is possible only with the simultaneous use of alphabetic writing.
Another property of hieroglyphic writing follows from the universality of hieroglyphic writing: the independence of the sign from its reading. The sign of hieroglyphic writing can have any number of readings in accordance with the number of languages ​​\u200b\u200bthat use this letter. So Chinese characters have not only Chinese, but also Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese readings. Inside China, each hieroglyph has both a "national" reading and many dialectical ones. At the same time, in many dialects, especially in the southern ones, two readings of the same hieroglyph are distinguished: colloquial and literary. The second is used when reading written texts aloud and when pronouncing the terms of science and culture.
Independence from the actual pronunciation of the signified linguistic unit also gives hieroglyphic writing timeless qualities: with knowledge of grammar, a text written in hieroglyphic writing can be understood regardless of when it was written, and its signs can be read in any convenient way. So, for example, the texts of ancient classical texts today can be read with the national reading of hieroglyphs, with any dialect reading, with Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese reading, completely regardless of how they were read at the time of creation. All these properties of hieroglyphic writing played an important role in the extraordinary stability of Chinese traditional culture and in the fact that Chinese writing is preserved in our time.

Yin letter

The first source of information about the ancient period in the development of Chinese writing comes from the inscriptions on fortune-telling bones found in large numbers during excavations of the last capital of the Shang Dynasty, which was located on the site of the modern Xiaotun village, Anyang County, Henan Province. According to the modern administrative division, Anyang County is part of Hebei Province. From the "Bamboo Annals" it is known that the Shan king Pan Geng in the 14th year of his reign, i.e. in 1387 BC. moved the capital from Yan north to Maine and named it Yin.
This city remained the capital of the Shang dynasty until the end of its existence in 1122 BC. The capital of Yin was not a city in the modern sense of the word, it was located in several villages on both sides of the Yellow River. Therefore, excavations not only in Xiaotong, but also in the surrounding villages belong to the Yin settlement.
The discovery of Yin writing was preceded by interesting story. In some Beijing pharmacies in the last century, the so-called dragon bones were sold, which were fragments of the shells of the skull, scapular bones of large mammals with incomprehensible signs applied to them. Dragon bones were sold as medicinal substances and in crushed form, used by some Chinese medicine doctors to treat wounds. At the end of the last century, these bones and especially the inscriptions on them became interested in the military minister of the Qing government, Wang Yizhong, who ordered to find out their origin. An investigation conducted by his subordinates showed that shells and bones with incomprehensible signs were delivered to Beijing from the city of Anyang in the neighboring province of Henan. The local population, of course, knew about them for a long time: these bones were often found during earthworks. Because they belonged large mammal and tortoises, which had not been in this area for a long time, the superstitious population considered them; dragon bones. Ominous objects that came across during earthworks were collected and thrown into wells, which were considered the habitat of dragons. Some of these bones fell into the hands of traveling merchants who sold them to Beijing pharmacies. Wang Yirong appreciated the importance of these inscriptions as early examples of Chinese writing and set about compiling a collection. At the same time, some Chinese lovers of antiquity and Christian missionaries who worked in Anyang began to collect collections. When enough materials had accumulated for their study, the outstanding Chinese historian and paleographer Wang Guowei took up these collections, who managed to read the inscriptions on several dozen objects. As a result of his labors, it was possible to determine that these inscriptions belong to the last period of the history of the Shang Dynasty. In terms of content, they represent a record of questions to the spirits of ancestors during divination, a record of answers to them, an indication of whether the prediction came true. Fortune-telling on the bones proceeded as follows: the priest-fortuneteller heated a section of the bone with a red-hot metal rod. From heating, cracks formed on it, the shape and direction of which were interpreted as a positive or negative answer to the question. The same question could be asked more than once in different form, they were all recorded there. For each fortune-telling, the date and name of the fortuneteller were indicated, such a structure of inscriptions on fortune-telling bones made it possible to determine their dating and sequence in time, to establish the names and chronology of the rulers of the last centuries of the Shang dynasty, as well as the main events in the state and the family of the ruler, about which these fortune-telling were made. From a technical point of view, the task that Wang Guowei solved can be defined as the deciphering of Yin hieroglyphic writing. Usually, scripts are deciphered with the help of a bilingual - a parallel inscription made by a known script. When deciphering the Yin script, the researcher does not have a bilingual, on the basis of which it is possible to reconstruct the signs of the Yin script using any other known script or using the Chinese script. modern look. The properties of bilingualism of the maximum degree are possessed by the dictionary Showen jiezi, compiled in the 1st century BC. AD which contains the ancient inscriptions of Chinese characters. However, the task of researchers of the Yin script was complicated by the fact that those ancient inscriptions that are given in this dictionary belong to a much later time, approximately the 5th-3rd centuries BC. e. These inscriptions in their graphic appearance were closer to the characters of the Yin script, but in no way coincided with it. Another important source for the reconstruction of the Yin script was the inscriptions of the characters in the original inscriptions on bronze vessels and bells of the Zhou era, which helped identify the characters of the Yin script with the characters of the modern form. The procedure for the reconstruction of the Yin script was the identification of signs on oracle bones and ancient signs from the specified dictionary using inscriptions on Zhou bronze. The identification of Yin characters with modern hieroglyphs through the signs of the Showen Jiezi dictionary and inscriptions on bronze as a method of reconstructing Yin writing turned out to be quite effective, despite the fact that it excluded the possibility of arbitrary interpretations of Yin characters. In addition, an area was discovered where its application was impossible. As it turned out in the course of deciphering, not all signs of the Yin script were included in the inscriptions on bronze items and other epigraphic monuments of the Zhou era. Therefore, for these signs, neither graphic identification nor definition of meaning by the currently accepted method is possible. Obviously, the reconstruction of the meaning of these hieroglyphs is possible only in the presence of a favorable context. At present, an opus of inscriptions on Yin oracle bones has been published, which is updated as new finds appear. It should be specially noted that at present the reconstruction is limited to the meanings of the characters of the Yin script. Their reading is currently unknown due to the lack of transcriptions. Wang Guowei's research on deciphering the Yin script was continued by the next generation of Chinese paleographers and is being successfully developed at the present time.
A great similarity with the Yin characters is observed in the original script, which is common in Shangjiangyu parish, Jiangyong county, Hunan province. This hieroglyphic script is used exclusively by women and is therefore called the female script, in contrast to the Chinese hieroglyphic script, which is called the male script. Currently, the texts of women's writing, starting from the 19th century, have been preserved. locals report that there were older written monuments of this
letters, but they were destroyed during the struggle against superstitions. According to its designation principles, women's writing is essentially no different from Chinese: it contains signs of pictographic and ideographic categories. Among them there are many that are used mainly as syllabic phonetic signs, which brings writing closer in its type to the syllabic alphabet. Se-Zhimin, the main researcher of this letter, believes that it directly goes back to the Yin script. More likely is the independent invention of signs for women's writing, but in any case this writing is of extreme interest.
The unity of any community of people is ensured and maintained thanks to a single code of communication, through which information is exchanged between its members. Both words and material symbols can serve as means of communication. Symbols are created by objects, gestures, images. They form verbal, perceptible, visual message codes. A notable feature of communication is that the same message can be encoded in different ways. So a certain historical event can be stated as an epic in oral form, as a fact of history in written form, presented as a dance, pantomime or theatrical performance.
However, any non-verbal communication is ultimately based on speech: any image, when comprehended, is described by speech means. The peculiarity of writing as a cultural phenomenon is that it mediocrely recodes human speech into visual images. The ways of this transcoding can be different. In the designation of semantic units of speech, different ways are possible. One of them is implemented in Maya writing, where each sign describes a certain situation, therefore, a one-to-one correspondence of a sign and verbal description there does not happen, but the situation is described correctly. According to the same principle, the writing of the people of the nose in South China is built. Another way is to create signs of writing that are directly related to the units of the language. Dividing speech into separate sounds is a difficult task that civilizations on all continents have been solving for many centuries. Much more natural and visual is the division of speech into semantic units. This problem has been successfully solved everywhere. Therefore, everywhere the torii of writing begins with hieroglyphic scripts, where each sign represents the situation as a whole or its separate part as a special subject. The connection of a sign for a separate object with a significant unit of speech - a morpheme or a syllable occurs later. At present, one can only assume that in reality the signs of Yin writing - objects or words - were designated. However, the fairly consistent grammar of these inscriptions suggests that the Yin script was already associated with speech. The only problem is the extent to which they reflected the Yin language.
The technique of forming visual images for the transmission of speech in the language of the Yin people is generated by their traditional culture. As you know, signs-symbols can be the most common objects, such as a laurel wreath - a symbol of victory, and an olive branch - a symbol of peace, etc. Gestures also have a sign function, which in the visual genres of art - theater and dance - in addition to semantic also have an aesthetic function.
According to its semantic structure, the Yin script consisted mainly of pictographic characters. The pictograms of the Yin script were a schematized image of one object: a mountain, the sun, flowing water, etc. The pictograms were created primarily to depict objects with a clearly expressed external form. To designate actions and processes, complex signs were created - ideograms, consisting of several simple images. The sign "to cultivate the land" was an image of a man holding a two-pronged hoe in his hand, "to fish" - an image of a fish, a net and two hands, "to row" - an image of a boat and a man with an oar in his hand. The process of creating signs of hieroglyphic writing can be shown on An example of two signs, one of which is a simple pictogram "eye", the other is a complex image consisting of an pictogram "eye" and a pictogram "hand", has the meaning "look". The function of the "hand" sign in this complex image is that it turns the meaning of the "eye" sign into the meaning of "look". The meaning of this combination is to combine the image of the active organ of vision with a certain hand gesture indicating that the organ performs its inherent functions.
The degree of detail in the image different occasions could be different. Unlike modern hieroglyphs, standard graphic units-graphemes were not distinguished within the characters of the Yin script. The number of features in the composition of the sign depended on the desire of the writer to convey more or less details in his image. Researchers of Yin writing point to the similarity of the graphic style of hieroglyphs depicting animals with the style of zoomorphic ornament, which is found on various objects of material culture of the Yin era and even previous historical eras. This means that in its origins, Chinese hieroglyphic writing is associated with fine arts and with ornament. This makes it clear why the signs of Chinese writing were called the word wen "pattern".
Each feature in the composition of a written sign has a certain structural meaning and subject semantics.
In the Yin hieroglyphic writing, there is still no clear division of the hieroglyph into graphic elements. If we return to the examples discussed above, then the signs given there cannot be clearly divided into graphic elements. The sign "cultivate the land" is an image of a man with a hoe in his hands, but not a graphic complex "man" + "hoe".
A clear division of hieroglyphs into graphic elements is associated with further development Yin writing and with the transformation of simple or compound hieroglyphs into standard signs of Chinese hieroglyphic writing. Despite the absence of a graphic standard for the signs of Yin writing and the absence of a clear separation of graphic elements in the composition, one can definitely talk about the presence of signs-pictograms or signs-ideograms in the Yin hieroglyphic writing. As in all hieroglyphic writings, Yin writing shows signs of phonetization: in the inscriptions on fortune-telling bones there are a small number of signs that are used phonetically; the same sound, that is, in the case of a syllogomorphemic language, it essentially acts as a syllabic sign. In the Chinese philological tradition, the phonetic use of a sign is called borrowing, and a character used as a syllabic sign is considered borrowed. Like many ancient writings, the Yin hieroglyphic writing on fortune-telling bones and tortoise shells had a clearly expressed sacred function. At one time it was believed that the use of writing in the Shang Empire was limited to the imperial court in the capital of Yin, but already in the 40s, oracle bones were found in excavations throughout the Shang Empire. The ubiquity of fortune-telling bones indicates that fortune-telling similar to the imperial ones was also carried out in the residences of other rulers. It is noteworthy that divination on bones and shells was preserved in the early years of the next Zhou dynasty and only then fell into disuse.
Unreadable inscriptions on ceramics also testify to the secular use of the Yin script. Therefore, the Yin script was probably also used in everyday life. It is not entirely clear what materials were used for writing. It is difficult to imagine that at that time there was already ink and some means for applying it to the surface. Bamboo plates would have been quite suitable for this purpose, but nothing is known about their use as writing material at that time. Therefore, one can be sure that the signs of Yin writing were applied with a sharp object to a bone, tortoise shell, wooden plank, or to the surface of unbaked clay.

Zhou script

In the transition from the Shang Dynasty to the Zhou Dynasty, ritual certainly turned out to be that area public life where the most significant changes have taken place. One of the attributes of the Zhou ritual was bronze ritual vessels and inscribed bells. Both were an obligatory part of the ritual of sacrifice in honor of the ancestor, who glorified the family and was awarded the mercy of Emperor Zhou. The rite of sacrifice, which required specially made vessels with inscriptions, was also performed after various kinds of awards and after the completion of an important legal act - a court decision, delimitation of lands, etc. In these cases, the inscriptions on the sacrificial vessels stated who and for what merits receives an appointment or other favor, and what is the decision of the court. Thus, ritual vessels performed the function of letters of commendation and court decisions to confirm the rights and privileges of their owner. A study of the language of the inscriptions on early Zhou ritual vessels suggests that the Zhou used the same language as the written language in which the oracle bones were inscribed. Over time, the language of the bronze inscriptions changed, which seems quite natural, because the Zhou dynasty ruled for almost a thousand years.
Despite the fact that inscriptions on fortune-telling bones of the Shang era are found throughout the entire territory of the Shang state, no noticeable local variants of the Yin hieroglyphic writing have been attested, which allows us to speak about the vulnerability of its distribution, as well as a fairly consistent observance of the rules for tracing its signs. At present, it is difficult to establish the reason why local variations began to develop in Chinese writing during the Zhou Dynasty. One of the most likely reasons is that writing has become more widely used and its functions have expanded. Perhaps it was at that time that administrative correspondence appeared between parts of the sovereign, huge in scale of that time, with the metropolis. Each administrative unit had its own scriptoria, which, when compiling various administrative documents, had to find or invent written signs to designate objects that had never been mentioned in written documents before. There is no doubt that different signs could be created to designate the same referent in different parts of the country. Local variants competed with each other on the general imperial scene, as a result of which, naturally, the most successful forms of signs were widely distributed. Despite the natural processes of selecting the most successful signs, it is natural to assume that the central government also took steps to unify writing.

The first known experience of codifying graphic Chinese writing is the list of hieroglyphs Shi Zhou pian "The Book of the Zhou Historiographer", compiled during the reign of Xuan Wang back in the era of the Western Zhou Dynasty. According to legend, this list consisted of 15 chapters, where the hieroglyphs were arranged in some meaningful order. It is possible that already in this list the hieroglyphs were arranged according to subject categories, which are observed in later lists. The graphic form of Chinese characters is called da zhuan "Great Seal"! What the characters from the Shi Zhou list looked like can be judged from the very limited number of such characters attested in the dictionary of Showen Jiezi. One of the variants of this letter can be seen on several inscriptions dating back to the 8th century. BC e., i.e., a little later than the time when Shi Zhou pian was compiled. The graphic form of Chinese characters, attested on stone drums, is called shigu wen "stone drum writing". Ten such drums were found in the territory former state Qin is still the era of the Tang Dynasty (618-782), when China first awakened interest in the written monuments of the past. A letter of the same type is found on the famous Pingyang stele, which was also found on the lands of the former Qin kingdom.

Calligraphy

Unique calligraphic art is rightfully considered national treasure China. Calligraphy is an art to which a person joins in China earlier than any other. Teaching a child to read and write, at the same time they begin to practice calligraphy, not only to facilitate the process of memorizing difficult and numerous hieroglyphs, but also to lay the foundations of aesthetic taste, to awaken the ability to perceive art and independent creativity.
“Calligraphy is music for the eyes,” said the Chinese sages, and calligraphy is also called objectless painting and silent music. They also say that calligraphy is a dance without a performer, architecture without structures and building materials. Such admiring epithets are a tribute to art with a capital letter. Indeed, the movement of a hand with a brush saturated with ink, similar to a kind of dance, subject to the inner creative concentration of the master, is able to create on a white sheet a special rhythmic harmony of black lines, strokes, dots - a harmony that conveys an endless range of human thoughts, feelings, moods. That is why calligraphy is the key to many other related arts that draw their inspiration from it.
Writing hieroglyphs beautifully and gracefully was considered a great art. The development of calligraphic handwriting also depended on the flexibility of the fingers, so the calligrapher and the scribe constantly held two balls in their right hands, which they touched, not allowing the fingers to “freeze”. Calligraphy was equated with such art forms as poetry and painting. Since ancient times, the people have had respect for those who knew classical books and knew how to write hieroglyphs beautifully. Large and beautifully written posters were hung on the street, in courtyards and indoors. The paper on which the hieroglyphs were written was highly valued, the written sheet was treated with respect and not thrown anywhere.
Calligraphy also reflects the main philosophical and aesthetic principles associated with ideas about the forces and laws of universal development. So, in one of the classic treatises it is said that “the power (yin-yang energy) hidden in the brush, hidden in its tip, finds its completion in the hieroglyph. The energy-strength invested in the brush is cast into an elegant, beautiful...”. The art of calligraphy is the embodiment of the highest harmony and already in ancient times it was considered “the first among the arts”.
Chinese calligraphy, like writing, began with simple characters, but over time, various styles and schools emerged that became an important part of Chinese culture. There are five styles of writing characters: zhuan, li, kai, xing (cursive writing) and cao.

"Zhuan" or printing type - the oldest style of writing hieroglyphs after divinatory inscriptions, which were inconvenient due to lack of uniformity. The first attempt to unify writing was made during the reign of the Zhou Wang Xuan (827-782 BC), when the court historian Shi Zhou compiled a dictionary of 15 parts, where standardized hieroglyphs were inscribed in the Zhuan style. This style is also called Zhou Zhuan, after its author. Shi Zhou's dictionary has long been lost, but it has been proven that the inscriptions on the "stone drums" of the Qin Dynasty were made in the Zhuan style.

When the first Qin emperor Qin Shi Huang in 221 BC. united the country, he ordered his minister Li Si to collect and classify all the forms of writing that existed up to that time in various parts of the country, and to unify the writing. Then Li Si chose the ancient Zhuan style for unification. Even now, a stele with characters engraved by Li Si himself can be seen in the Taishan Mountain Deity Temple in Shandong Province. But only 9 and a half hieroglyphs survived, and the rest were erased by time.

"Lishu"(official script) was created on the basis of "xiaozhuan" (small seal) during the reign of the same Qin dynasty. The appearance of the new script was due to the fact that "Xiaozhuan", although it was a simplified script, turned out to be too complicated for state officials, who had to rewrite a huge number of documents. Prison guard Cheng Miao also simplified the Xiaozhuan script by straightening out the curved lines. The font was named "li", which means "clerk" in Chinese. According to another version, Cheng Miao committed some kind of misconduct and was imprisoned, that is, he became involuntary, “li”. Therefore, the font was called "Lishu" - "Slave's font".

"Kaishu"(statutory letter). The earliest examples of this style of writing date back to the Wei Dynasty (220-265), but this script became widespread during the Jin Dynasty (265-420). The modern font has a square shape without any slant. Hieroglyphs consist of 8 types of strokes: dot, horizontal, vertical, hook, ascending, folding to the left and folding to the right. Any aspiring calligrapher should start by learning this particular style.

"Caoshu"(cursive) developed from lishu, suitable for quick but sloppy writing. This script is subdivided into two more subtypes: "zhangcao" and "jincao".

Zhangcao font appeared during the Qin dynasty and was widespread until the 3rd-2nd century BC. Although the hieroglyphs are written in cursive, they are located separately from each other, and the dots do not merge with other features.

"Jincao" or modern cursive was invented by Zhang Zhi (?-192) during the Eastern Han Dynasty, and became widespread during the Jin and Tang dynasties. This font is still popular today. The main feature of cursive writing is the rapid writing of hieroglyphs with interconnected features. When writing in jincao script, hieroglyphs are often connected to each other: the last line of one goes into the first line of the next. In the same text, hieroglyphs can vary in size, which depends only on the whim of the calligrapher.

Zhang Xu, who lived during the Tang Dynasty in the 8th century, is considered the great master of "caoshu". He was famous for his carelessness when working with a brush. It is said that he did not sit down to write a letter sober. He created a unique style. When the brush seems to be galloping across the paper, spinning, spinning, turning the text into one continuous hieroglyph. You can still see fragments of steles engraved by his hand in the Shaanxi Provincial Museum.

"Xinshu"(running cursive) is something between a charter letter and cursive.

If you write in this script more carefully with distinguishable features, then it looks like a "kaisha". And if you write quickly, then "xingshu" will be close to "caoshu". Chinese calligraphers often compare these three styles—kaishu, xingshu, and caoshu—to standing, walking, and running. Undoubtedly, the Lanting Pavilion Inscriptions by Wang Xizhi (321-379) during the Eastern Jin Dynasty are recognized as the best example of writing "xingshu".

Four Jewels of the Scholar's Office (wenfangsibao)
The brush, inkwell, paper, and ink are the traditional tools of calligraphers and artists in China, which is why they are often referred to as the "Four Treasures of the Cabinet". Traditionally, xuan paper, hui ink, hu brush and duan inkwell were considered the best.

Xuan paper (xuanzhi)
This paper is mainly used in calligraphy and painting. Already during the Tang Dynasty, this paper was used as an offering to the imperial court. All the famous masterpieces of Chinese painting were made on xuan paper. Without it, the existence of traditional Chinese painting is unthinkable.
In the West, "xuan" is called rice paper, which is not entirely true. In fact, it was made from the bark of pteroceltis tatarinowii mixed with rice straw. The birthplace of paper is Jingxian County in Anhui Province. Since in ancient times the county belonged to the province of Xuanzhou, and the city of Xuancheng was the center of the paper trade, it received such a name.

The process of making paper was labor intensive and consisted of 18 stages lasting about 300 days. Xuan paper is considered the best for white, like plaster, color, softness and strength, time-tested. The ink on such paper is absorbed and does not spread, because its surface is not too smooth and not too rough. Xuan paper is used not only in calligraphy and painting, but especially in our time for diplomatic agreements and other important documents. It can also be used as blotting paper or for filtering.

Brushes "hu" (hubi)
The use of brushes for writing is one of the features of Chinese calligraphy. They are still used by students in calligraphy and painting classes and, of course, by professionals. According to legend, the first brush was made by the general of the first Qin Emperor Meng Tian, ​​who stood with his troops along the Great Wall for a long time. Once he accidentally noticed a piece of sheep's wool on the wall. The general picked it up and tied it to a branch - and this is how the first brush for writing turned out. But, according to archaeologists, this is just a beautiful legend. Based on studies of painted pottery from the Neolithic Banpo culture, discovered near Xi'an, it was proved that primitive brushes appeared 6,000 years ago. But people still consider Meng Tian to be the inventor of the brush. Shanlian Township in Wuxing County, Zhejiang Province, considered the "City of Brushes", is also called Menxi (River of Meng) in memory of General Meng Tian. The brushes produced here are called "hubi", as the town was once located in the territory of Huzhou prefecture. They are considered the best brushes in the country.
Hu brushes are made from the hair of goats, hares and yellow weasels. The brush will follow the hand of the master on paper: where necessary, the lines will be lighter or darker, wider or narrower. High-quality hu brushes must meet 4 requirements: a sharp tip, a well-defined hairline, a rounded shape, and the ability to recover quickly. The production of the brush consists of 70 stages. For example, material preparation involves sorting wool according to thickness, length, softness or stiffness. Wool with different characteristics used to produce different types of brushes. Nowadays, more than 200 types are produced. The brush stick is made from high quality local bamboo and is often decorated with ivory or mahogany, designs or inscriptions. Once brushes "hu" were supplied to the imperial court. They were obligatory element desktop of an educated person.

Ink "hui" (huimo)
In China, they used “hard ink” or “carcass bar” for writing, which in turn could be real works of art. To prepare the ink for writing, a little water was poured into the inkwell, and then the bar was rubbed in a circular motion. When the liquid became thick and black, it was ready for use.
Before the invention of ink, graphite was used for writing. But with the development of the country under the Han Dynasty, graphite production did not meet the growing demand. At that time, the production of carcasses from soot from burnt pine wood began.
During the Ming Dynasty, ink was made from burnt pine resin, lard, and vegetable oil. The first high-quality ink in China began to be made in Shexian County, Anhui Province, and since the county was called Huizhou during the Song Dynasty, the ink began to be called "Hui". This type of ink was invented by the artisan Xi Chao and his son Xi Tinggui during the Tang Dynasty, and then spread throughout Huizhou County.

The best mascara may contain musk and other aromatic substances used in traditional Chinese medicine. Thanks to them, the ink retains its black color for a long time. Ordinary mascara is sold in pieces, and expensive ones are sold in pairs. The bars are usually gilded and decorated with paintings and poems by great masters. A couple of luxurious bars were placed in a silk box. Calligraphers of all times have attached great importance to the choice of ink. For example, during the Qing Dynasty, individual bars of carcasses could be sold by weight at the price of gold.

Duan inkwell
To write with ink, you need one more item - an inkwell. In ancient times, the Chinese used a plate for rubbing carcasses or a stone for this purpose. The earliest inkwells date back to the Han Dynasty (206 BC - 220), meaning they have been used for writing for over 2,000 years. In a nutshell, an inkwell is a stone on which ink is rubbed with water. As a rule, smooth or slightly rough stones were used for making.
A discerning calligrapher will only use an ink bottle made in Duanxi, a suburb of Zhaoqing (formerly Duanzhou), in Guangdong. The inkwells were named after the origin of the duan stone. Their history goes back over 1500 years.

Before becoming a fine inkwell, a stone must go through a laborious process that includes quarrying, selecting, engraving, polishing and finishing with packaging in an elegant box. The most difficult stage is the extraction of stone in the mountains of Keshan, which is not far from Zhaoqing. For the extraction of stone at the foot of the mountain, a tunnel was punched and water was pumped out. Stonemasons work up to their sweat to get the stone of the required quality, which is subject to strict control.
Duan inkwells are valued for their smooth surface, which always shines as if wet. With their help, the process of grinding the carcass takes a minimum of time. They are also suitable for storing unused mascara. Also, a selected stone can have elegant natural patterns.

Chinese seals

Seal carving is traditionally considered one of the four unique Chinese arts that make up the cultural heritage of the Middle Kingdom - along with painting, calligraphy and poetry. The red imprint of the Chinese seal is not only a signature or sign, but also an object of aesthetic contemplation and a touch on the "phenomena of the East."
The history of Chinese seals dates back to the prehistoric Yin Dynasty, which existed 3,700 years ago. Then the fortune-tellers carved their predictions on the shells of turtles. The art of seal carving flourished 22 centuries ago during the Qin Dynasty. Then the Chinese began to carve their names on household utensils and documents (made of wood or bamboo) in order to indicate their belonging to one or another owner. Then came the engraving of personal names on bone, jade or wood - in fact, what we now mean by Chinese seals.

As in other countries, seals can be used by officials or institutions, as well as by private individuals. Starting from the Age of Warring States (475-221 centuries BC), the seal has become an indispensable attribute of the appointment by the emperor or prince of any official to any post. The seal represented office and power. Individuals used seals to certify written documents or simply as a symbol of good luck and prosperity to the owners.
The most interesting thing is that the seals are a living and imperishable reflection of the development of Chinese writing. The earliest seals - during the Qin and Han dynasties - were cut using the ancient zhuan script, a wavy script. Therefore, seal carving is still sometimes called “zhuanke” - “wave carving”. And in English this font is called Seal Characters. As writing developed, new fonts were used for seals. And now seals can be cut in almost any style, except for italics.

Hieroglyphs on the seal can be either embossed or recessed. The material for printing is selected at the request of the customer. Usually stone, wood or bone is used. But special connoisseurs and aesthetes prefer seals made of precious and semi-precious stones such as heliotrope, jade, agate, crystal, as well as ivory and other valuable materials.
Emperors used gold or more precious stones for their seals. Today, Chinese central government departments generally use bronze seals, while lower levels use wooden seals.

Expensive seals are customarily decorated with various inscriptions on the side, and the finials themselves are sometimes works of art, as they are decorated with various figures. Especially often you can meet the figure of a lion - a symbol of power and prosperity.

Printing, as a work of art, includes three aspects: calligraphy, composition and engraving. The master must be proficient in all styles of calligraphy. He must master the techniques of layout and composition in order to place several complex hieroglyphs in a limited space and achieve a high aesthetic effect. He must also be able to work with different materials, as different knives are used for different materials and different carving skills are used. Watching a seal carver at work is considered one of the popular entertainments for the Chinese.

Literacy education

Due to its complexity, isolation from the living language and, in its own way, ritual significance for the state, writing in old China has always been an object of sincere reverence and even almost religious admiration. Throwing away any written sheets was considered the height of indecency, they were burned with honors in special urns. Naturally, literacy has always been a matter of special concern for the leaders of Chinese society. They tried to teach a child to write almost from infancy. In noble families, the first, and sometimes the only toys a child had were writing materials and sheets with hieroglyphs. Under the guidance of a teacher, the kid learned the basics of literacy, painting over the signs drawn in red ink, and soon pleased the elders with his own hand-drawn inscription from simple, but selected hieroglyphs with a long-range aim:
I will bring a gift to my father.
Confucius himself taught three thousand.
Seventy became real scientists.
And you, little students, eight or nine of you!
Diligently transform humanity,
And learn what a ritual is.

Now the young student, who did not yet understand what he was writing, could take up books for initial reading. One of them has traditionally been a list of family signs. It is known that in the Han era it included 132 characters, later their number grew to 400. Another, the most popular book was called the “Canon of Three Characters” and consisted of many lines of three characters each. These were mainly edifying maxims, composed without allowance for the tender age of the students. On the very first page of this peculiar primer one could read:
“Where does a person begin: his nature is at the basis of goodness. By nature, people are close to each other, by habits they are far from each other.
The third primer, the so-called "Canon of a Thousand Hieroglyphs", was a coherent text of exactly a thousand characters, none of which was repeated. He also introduced the young student to traditional ideas about man and the world. For example, he began with a statement of the foundations of cosmology:
“The sky is dark, the Earth is yellow, the universe is great and vast…”
In the seventh or eighth year of life, classical education began for boys. It was considered, of course, as preparation for the service. Students did not receive special or technical knowledge: professionalism could even prevent future officials from carrying out their mission of governing the state through symbolic gestures. The study was reduced to memorizing the Confucian canons, and there were a total of more than 400 thousand hieroglyphs in them. It took at least six years of hard daily practice to memorize all these books. The wisdom of the ancients was hammered into the heads of the students in the simplest way: the teacher read the saying aloud, after which the students recited it in chorus and one by one. Having repeated the same phrase, looking at the book fifty times and the same number from memory, even a schoolboy who did not shine with abilities memorized it firmly. In negligent and incapable science was driven with a stick. Exemplary commentaries on the canons, rules of versification, and individual historical and literary works were also studied in the old Chinese school. It took at least 12-13 years of hard daily practice to complete a classical education.

In the late Middle Ages, the basis of school education was the memorization of the main Confucian canons, the so-called "Tetrabook", and comments on them by Zhu Xi. Elements of traditional education - primarily memorization of the canons - are still preserved in the Republic of China on Taiwan.

Written and spoken languages

Since the written language finally broke away from the spoken language (this happened, as already mentioned, in the middle of the 1st millennium), the relationship between writing and speech has become an important problem in Chinese society and culture. As the circle of educated people expanded, it became more and more acute. Throughout the Middle Ages, classical literary works were created in a dead bookish language - wenyan. The influence of oral speech affects them only sporadically. Since the Song era, when a developed urban culture developed in China, this influence has been noticeably increasing. In the XI century. a genre of short stories in colloquial language, the so-called huaben, arises. The basis for the new literature was the then dialect of Northern China. The theatrical art, which was fueled by both classical literature and folklore, played a significant role in the convergence of literature and oral language. From the 13th century the term “colloquial language” itself appears - baihua (the term “bai” was borrowed from the theatrical lexicon, where it denoted the prosaic remarks of the actors). Of course, it included many elements of the traditional written language.

In the following centuries, baihua became the basis of new prose genres and, above all, novels. Baihua transcriptions of works previously written in Wenyang are being created. As a result, by the XIX century. In China, a new literary language has developed based on the spoken language. The first work written entirely in the language of modern prose is considered to be the novel Seaside Flowers by the Shanghai writer Han Bangqing, published in 1894. At the same time, the first magazines and newspapers in baihua appeared in China. The book language was still used in official documents and traditional genres of classical literature - treatises, essays, poems on ancient rhymes, and so on.
At the same time, the "language of officials" (guanhua), based on the Beijing dialect, is spreading throughout northern China. It was the language of civil servants, both Manchu and Chinese. It formed the basis of modern literary language, in English called Mandarin language. Of course, there are significant differences between the literary languages ​​in Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and the PRC, especially in vocabulary.

Since the end of the 19th century, the formation of a national language has noticeably accelerated due to the introduction into the vocabulary of a huge number of new words and terms that came from Japanese and European languages, and all these words were two- or three-syllable. The tasks of translating foreign concepts were solved in different ways. Sometimes a Chinese word close in meaning was chosen for this: for example, the term “revolution” is conveyed by the concept of “change of command to kingdom” (gemin), which is already found in ancient Chinese texts. The Chinese astrology term shuxue - "science of numbers" - has become a designation for mathematics. Such concepts as “present”, “past” and “future”, “world”, “faith” and so on came from Buddhist literature into modern Chinese. Most often, the meaning of a foreign word was conveyed using a previously unknown combination of morphemes, for example: philosophy - zhexue (lit. "science of wisdom"), chemistry - huaxue ("science of transformations"), telephone - dianhua ("electric speech"). Thus, wenyan plays a role in modern China similar to that played in Europe by Latin and Greek. Later, phonetic borrowings from foreign languages ​​began to appear in Chinese - for example, buershiveike (Bolshevik), suveiai (council), and so on. However, such transcriptions make up a very small part of the borrowed words and often contain some additional meaning for the Chinese reader. For example, the word "humor" (yumo) literally means "deep silence". Although the Chinese language, as we have seen, stubbornly resists the direct borrowing of foreign words, the grammar of the new literary language converges in many respects with the grammar of Western languages: conjunctions, categories of tense of the verb, indicators of adjectives and adverbs, and many other innovations appear. If we ignore the historical and cultural context of hieroglyphs, the language of modern Chinese newspapers is lexically and stylistically quite adequate to the language of modern Western press.

Baihua literature began to enter widely into everyday life Chinese after the overthrow of the monarchy, when the previous examinations for the academic title were abolished and Wenyan lost the position of the official language. Authoritative writers of that time unanimously stood up for the transformation of baihua into the language of fiction and journalism. Nevertheless, wenyan retained for a long time, and outside the PRC, to a certain extent, still retains its position in the press due to its semantic capacity. Only after the founding of the People's Republic of China did baihua establish itself in all areas cultural life and became the national language of the Chinese. Nevertheless, the problem of combining a single literary language with dialects has not yet been resolved. In addition, in the context of the general spread of baihua, a new problem arose as the modern Chinese assimilated the richest literary heritage Wenyan language.

Chinese writing in the 20th century

Since the end of the 19th century, in connection with the need to modernize China and introduce literacy to broad sections of society, the question of writing reform has arisen with particular urgency. This reform was carried out in several directions:
First, attempts were made to determine the number of characters needed for general use. It was experimentally established that about 4300 characters are used in educational texts, as well as in children's and popular literature. At present, it is believed that knowledge of 7-9 thousand hieroglyphs is sufficient for reading literary works (with a total number of 50 thousand).

Secondly, the writing reform was carried out along the line of simplification of traditional written characters, for which various methods were used: reducing the sign to one or two of the most characteristic features, using cursive styles, cutting off part of the hieroglyph, or even completely replacing a complex sign with another, simpler in style. In the 30s, the first list of simplified hieroglyphs appeared, numbering 2400 characters; more than 300 of them have been officially recommended for consumption. However, in Kuomintang China and later in Taiwan, simplified signs, with rare exceptions, did not take root. On a large scale, the hieroglyphic simplification program was carried out only in the mid-50s in the PRC: access to the basics of literacy was facilitated for the general population, but today an ordinary PRC resident practically cannot read old books or even newspapers published in Taiwan.

The third direction of the writing reform is the creation of an alphabetic script. The first Chinese alphabets, based on Latin, were compiled by Christian missionaries in the second half of the 19th century, but were not successful. The exception was the alphabet for the dialect of Southern Fujian, which came into use in Taiwan. At the beginning of the XX century. two syllabaries appeared - for the "language of officials" of Northern China and southern dialects. On the basis of the first one, in 1919, the so-called alphabet for indicating pronunciation, zhuyin zimu, was adopted for use for educational purposes. Graphically, this alphabet consisted of extremely simplified elements of Chinese characters with an indication of reading in Latin letters. Zhuyin Zimu was considered only as an aid in teaching hieroglyphic writing. To this day, it is adopted in Taiwan. In the People's Republic of China, a completely Latinized alphabet was adopted, the so-called alphabet of pronounced sounds - pinyin zimu. The use of the latter is also limited mainly to the field of school education.

Although in the first half of the XX century. many influential scientists, writers and public figures in China put forward projects for a radical reform of writing up to the complete replacement of hieroglyphs with alphabetic writing or even with some artificial language like Esperanto, the real results of their reform activities turned out to be very modest and, moreover, not without a number of negative consequences- for example, a clearly marked gap between modern literacy and the written tradition of old China. In the context of the general computerization of society, which is taking place before our eyes in China, the reform of hieroglyphic writing generally loses its meaning. But alphabetical writing unexpectedly turned out to be very useful for compiling various kinds of text programs in Chinese.