Chinese Character Writing For Dummies by Wendy Abraham & Jing Li

Author:Wendy Abraham & Jing Li
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781119475552
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2019-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

Adding bronze carvings to the mix

Toward the end of the Shang dynasty, characters were next carved onto bronze, and Chinese writing evolved into the form found on ritual bronze vessels used for sacrificing to Heaven, as well as on ritual bells, and signature seals, all dating to the Western Zhou (ca. 1066–770 BCE) and the Spring and Autumn period (770–476 BCE) of the Eastern Zhou dynasty (770–256 BCE), when Confucius lived. This writing was called Jīn wén 金文 (jeen one) (metal script). The shape of Jīn wén characters was similar to oracle bone script of the Shang dynasty, but less angular because it was easier to write in the wet clay of the molds they used to cast bronzes. This also meant that characters could be thicker and more structured, since scribes were no longer at the mercy of a single sharp implement as they tried to etch characters into the difficult surfaces of bone and shell.

While the vast majority of Jīn wén characters were chiseled with a stylus, some were actually written with a brush dipped in ink made of cinnabar.

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