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Clerical Script
The clerical script (), sometimes also chancery script, is a style of Chinese writing that evolved from the late Warring States period to the Qin dynasty. It matured and became dominant in the Han dynasty, and remained in active use through the Six Dynasties period. In its development, it departed significantly from the earlier scripts in terms of graphic structures (a process known as '' libian''), and was characterized by its rectilinearity, a trait shared with the later regular script. Although it was succeeded by the later scripts, including the regular script, the clerical script is preserved as a calligraphic practice. In Chinese calligraphy, the term ''clerical'' often refers to a specific calligraphic style that is typical of a subtype of the clerical script, the Han ''clerical'' () or ''bafen'' () script. This style is characterized by the squat character shapes, and its "wavy" appearance due to the thick, pronounced and slightly downward tails that are up-tilted at t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Logographic
In a written language, a logogram (from Ancient Greek 'word', and 'that which is drawn or written'), also logograph or lexigraph, is a written character that represents a semantic component of a language, such as a word or morpheme. Chinese characters as used in Written Chinese, Chinese as well as other languages are logograms, as are Egyptian hieroglyphs and characters in cuneiform script. A writing system that primarily uses logograms is called a ''logography''. Non-logographic writing systems, such as alphabets and syllabaries, are ''phonemic'': their individual symbols represent sounds directly and lack any inherent meaning. However, all known logographies have some phonetic component, generally based on the rebus principle, and the addition of a phonetic component to pure ideographs is considered to be a key innovation in enabling the writing system to adequately encode human language. Types of logographic systems Some of the earliest recorded writing systems are logograp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Book Of Han
The ''Book of Han'' is a history of China finished in 111 CE, covering the Western, or Former Han dynasty from the first emperor in 206 BCE to the fall of Wang Mang in 23 CE. The work was composed by Ban Gu (32–92 CE), an Eastern Han court official, with the help of his sister Ban Zhao, continuing the work of their father, Ban Biao. They modelled their work on the ''Records of the Grand Historian'' (), a cross-dynastic general history, but theirs was the first in this annals-biography form to cover a single dynasty. It is the best source, sometimes the only one, for many topics such as literature in this period. The ''Book of Han'' is also called the ''Book of the Former Han'' () to distinguish it from the '' Book of the Later Han'' () which covers the Eastern Han period (25–220 CE), and was composed in the fifth century by Fan Ye (398–445 CE). Contents This history developed from a continuation of Sima Qian's ''Records of the Grand Hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Semi-cursive Script
Semi-cursive script, also known as running script, is a style of Chinese calligraphy that emerged during the Han dynasty (202 BC220 AD). The style is used to write Chinese characters and is abbreviated slightly where a character's strokes are permitted to be visibly connected as the writer writes, but not to the extent of the cursive style. This makes the style easily readable by readers who can read regular script and quickly writable by calligraphers who require ideas to be written down quickly. In order to produce legible work using the semi-cursive style, a series of writing conventions is followed, including the linking of the strokes, simplification and merging strokes, adjustments to stroke order and the distribution of text of the work. One of the most notable calligraphers who used this style was Wang Xizhi (303–361). Wang is known for the '' Lantingji Xu'' ('Preface to the Orchid Pavilion Collection'), a work published in 353 which remains highly influenti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Cursive Script (East Asia)
Cursive script (; , ''sōshotai''; , ''choseo''; ), often referred to as ''grass script'', is a script style used in Chinese and East Asian calligraphy. It is an umbrella term for the cursive variants of the clerical script and the regular script. The cursive script functions primarily as a kind of shorthand script or calligraphic style and is faster to write than other styles, but it can be difficult to read for those unfamiliar with it because of its abstraction and alteration of character structures. People who can read only standard or printed forms of Chinese or related scripts may have difficulty reading the cursive script. Names The character primarily means "grass", and the character means script in this context, which has led to the literal calque for as "grass script". However, can be extended to mean "hurried" or "rough", from which the name came. Thus, the name of this script is literally "draft script", "quick script" or "rough script". The character ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Qiu Xigui
Qiu Xigui (; (13 July 1935 – 8 May 2025) was a Chinese historian, palaeographer, and professor of Fudan University. His book ''Chinese Writing'' is considered the "single most influential study of Chinese palaeography". Early life and education Qiu Xigui was born in July 1935 in Shanghai, of Ningbo ancestry. In 1952, he was admitted to the history department of Fudan University and was interested in pre- Qin dynasty Chinese history. Under the influence of the renowned oracle bone expert Hu Houxuan, he took interest in the oracle bones and Chinese bronze inscriptions. After graduating in 1956, he became a graduate student of oracle bones and Shang dynasty history, studying under Professor Hu. The same year, Hu was transferred to the Institute of History of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, and Qiu followed Hu to the institute. Career After finishing his graduate studies in 1960, Qiu was assigned to be a teaching assistant in the Department of Chinese of Peking Un ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Stelae
A stele ( ) or stela ( )The plural in English is sometimes stelai ( ) based on direct transliteration of the Greek, sometimes stelae or stelæ ( ) based on the inflection of Greek nouns in Latin, and sometimes anglicized to steles ( ) or stelas ( ). is a stone or wooden slab, generally taller than it is wide, erected in the ancient world as a monument. The surface of the stele often has text, ornamentation, or both. These may be inscribed, carved in relief, or painted. Stelae were created for many reasons. Grave stelae were used for funerary or commemorative purposes. Stelae as slabs of stone would also be used as ancient Greek and Roman government notices or as boundary markers to mark borders or property lines. Stelae were occasionally erected as memorials to battles. For example, along with other memorials, there are more than half-a-dozen steles erected on the battlefield of Waterloo at the locations of notable actions by participants in battle. A traditional Western ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Stroke (CJK Character)
Strokes ( zh, t=筆畫, s=笔画, p=bǐhuà) are the smallest structural units making up written Chinese characters. In the act of writing, a stroke is defined as a movement of a writing instrument on a writing material surface, or the trace left on the surface from a discrete application of the writing implement. The modern sense of discretized strokes first came into being with the clerical script during the Han dynasty. In the regular script that emerged during the Tang dynasty—the most recent major style, highly studied for its aesthetics in East Asian calligraphy—individual strokes are discrete and highly regularized. By contrast, the ancient seal script has line terminals within characters that are often unclear, making them non-trivial to count. Study and classification of strokes is useful for understanding Chinese calligraphy, Chinese character calligraphy, ensuring character legibility, identifying fundamental components of Radical (Chinese characters), radicals, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Qingchuan County
Qingchuan County () is a county in the northeast of Sichuan province, China, bordering the provinces of Gansu to the north and Shaanxi to the northeast. It is the westernmost county-level division of the prefecture-level city of Guangyuan. It has an area of 3269 square kilometers and a population of 156,387, including Han Chinese as well as Hui people. Administrative divisions Qingchuan has 12 towns A town is a type of a human settlement, generally larger than a village but smaller than a city. The criteria for distinguishing a town vary globally, often depending on factors such as population size, economic character, administrative stat ..., 6 townships, and 2 Ethnic townships: Towns Townships Ethnic townships * Dayuan Hui Ethnic Township (大院回族乡) * Haoxi Hui Ethnic Township (蒿溪回族乡) Other *Tangjiahe National Nature Reserve (唐家河国家级自然保护区) Climate References External linksOfficial website of Qingchuan County Government {{aut ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Shuihudi Qin Bamboo Texts
The Shuihudi Qin bamboo texts () are early Chinese texts written on bamboo slips, and are also sometimes called the Yúnmèng Qin bamboo texts. They were excavated in December 1975 from Tomb #11 at Shuìhǔdì () in Yunmeng County, Hubei, China. The tomb belonged to a Qin administrator 217 BCE. Written in the Qin dynasty, the texts record Qin laws and public documents. Their contents have been published in the book 《睡虎地秦墓竹簡》 (''Shuìhǔdì Qínmù Zhújiǎn''). This cache of bamboo slips is of great importance for research into the government, economics, culture, law, military affairs, etc. of the late Warring States to the Qin period. While the Shuihudi cache is deemed to be among the most valuable epigraphic sources on the Qin history, the discoveries of the Qin Slips of Liye in 2002 and 2005 are regarded as being of equal, if not bigger, importance. Yuri Pines, Gideon Shelach, Lothar von Falkenhausen, Robin D. S. Yates (eds.). Birth of an Empire:The S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Bamboo And Wooden Slips
Bamboo and wooden strips ( zh, s=简牍, t=簡牘, first=t, p=jiǎndú) are long, narrow strips of wood or bamboo, each typically holding a single column of several dozen brush-written characters. They were the main media for writing documents in China before the widespread history of paper, introduction of paper during the first two centuries AD. (Silk was occasionally used, for example in the Chu Silk Manuscript, but was prohibitively expensive for most documents.) Strips of wood or bamboo vary primarily in length. For bamboo manuscripts, the strips can go from as short as 9 cm to as long as 45 cm. The width is more consistently around 0.6 cm. The writing proceeds vertically, from right to left. Strips were bound together with hemp, silk, or leather and used to make a kind of folding book, called ''jiǎncè'' or ''jiǎndú''. The binding process usually takes place after the writing, with a few exceptions. The earliest surviving examples of wood and bamboo sli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Small Seal Script
The small seal script is an archaic script style of written Chinese. It developed within the state of Qin during the Eastern Zhou dynasty (771–256 BC), and was then promulgated across China in order to replace script varieties used in other ancient Chinese states following Qin's wars of unification and establishment of the Qin dynasty (221–206 BC) under Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China. History During the Eastern Zhou dynasty (256 BC), local varieties of Chinese character forms had developed across the country, producing the 'scripts of the six states' ()—which were later collectively referred to as large seal script. This variance was considered unacceptable by the nascent Qin dynasty (221–206 BC), who saw it as a hindrance to timely communication, trade, taxation, and transportation, as well as being a potential vector for fomenting political dissent. Around 220 BC, Qin Shi Huang ordered a systematic standardization of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Qin (state)
Qin (, , or ''Ch'in'') was an ancient Chinese state during the Zhou dynasty. It is traditionally dated to 897 BC. The state of Qin originated from a reconquest of western lands that had previously been lost to the Xirong. Its location at the western edge of Chinese civilisation allowed for expansion and development that was not available to its rivals in the North China Plain. After extensive reform during the 4th century BC, Qin emerged as one of the dominant powers among the Seven Warring States. It Qin's wars of unification, unified the seven states of China under Qin Shi Huang in 221 BC. This unification established the Qin dynasty, which, despite its short duration, had a significant influence on later Chinese history. Accordingly, the state of Qin before the Qin dynasty was established is also referred to as the "predynastic Qin" or "proto-Qin". History Founding According to the 2nd-century BC ''Records of the Grand Historian'' by Sima Qian, the state of Qi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |