Text by He Zhihong and Guillaume Olive Illustrations and calligraphy by He Zhihong
TUTTLE PUBLISHING
Tokyo • Rutland, Vermont • Singapore
Published by Tuttle Publishing, an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd.
English translation copyright © 2010 Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd.
Copyright © 2006 Editions Philippe Picquier
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2010928296
ISBN: 978-1-4629-0987-2 (ebook)
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Contents
“My name is Mimi, I’m eight years old, and I’m learning Chinese calligraphy!
Chinese writing and calligraphy are two different things. People often confuse the two. Kids in China learn to write with a pencil or a pen, but they don’t all practice calligraphy—you use a brush for that. Calligraphy is the art of creating the characters beautifully, not just writing them down. In China it’s been an art for thousands of years, and it’s still very important today. Just like famous paintings, wonderful Chinese calligraphy can be displayed in museums and can be very valuable.
Together we’ll start by discovering the rules of Chinese writing... which are very different from our English writing rules. Then we'll learn about the important ideas in calligraphy, and finally we’ll practice. As you’ll see, it’s not so hard. While you learn calligraphy, you'll discover some other special talents too: how to master your mind’s focus, your breathing, and even how you move!
But first, let’s uncover the mysteries of Chinese writing, from its beginnings…”
According to legend, there was once an extraordinary being whose name was Cang Jie. He had two pairs of eyes. One day, while observing animal tracks on the ground, he copied them and got the idea of writing. That’s how he invented Chinese characters.
Did you know the Chinese language has no alphabet? Chinese characters are not letters, but drawings. Chinese writing is one of the most ancient systems of writing in the world. It appeared about six thousand years ago, on pottery, when messages were painted and carved onto the clay.
Slowly, writing evolved. That means it developed and got more complicated over time. At first writing was carved on turtle shells and animal bones, then later it was carved on bronze and stone. Characters were of different sizes and there were many versions of the same word. But around the year 200 B.C.E., the ruler nicknamed “the first emperor,” Qin Shihuang, united the whole country and made rules to follow about the way to write each character. Also, after paper was invented, using a brush to write became common.
Century after century, Chinese characters have evolved in different styles that you’ll learn about later in this book. In 1956, China simplified many of the characters by reducing the number of strokes they had.
Chinese writing is made up of around 10,000 characters. In order to read the newspaper, you have to know 3,000.
