Modern Written Chinese and Chinese Writing

Modern Written Chinese

Chen, Ping “Modern Written Chinese in Development.” Language in Society 22, no. 4 (December 1993): 505-537.
Summary

The main point of this article is to show the development of modern written Chinese in terms of the literary classical Chinese (wényán) being replaced by the vernacular script of everyday life (báihuà).

Wényán was the writing standard for the 2,000 years before the cultural upheavals that started in 1919. It was formed from the Chinese spoken during the pre-Qin and Han periods (206 BCE to 220 CE). Even though the wényán was closely related to the spoken language early on it soon became divorced.

Báihuà was a script created during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE) that was more closely aligned with the common speech. Although the vocabulary and grammar of the wényán script was different from the spoken language it was used by the literary elite who looked down on the báihuà script. Although not the elite script, báihuà gained a little higher status at the end of the Tang Dynasty and was used to write novels up to the end of the Qing Dynasty (1911).

Chinese Writing

Chang, Cheng-Mei. “Chinese Writing.” Expedition 31, no. 1 (1989): 40-51.
Summary

The focus of this article is to show the progression of the script throughout the dynasties as well as the development of the art of calligraphy. The Chinese script is unique in the fact that it is understood by knowing the character regardless of the pronunciation. It therefore unifies peoples that speak many different dialects. Right at the beginning the author asserts that Chinese did not evolve from a pictographic script, but was mostly of a phonographic script with some logograms.

Shang Dynasty

The earliest evidence of writing was found written on bones, 'shell-bone script.' The script contained 3000-4000 character, of which we can identify about 1000-2000. Although the size of different characters was not standardized (depending on number of strokes), the way it was written was—vertically downward and then left to right.

Zhou Dynasty

Most of the Zhou Dynasty's 'bronze script' has been found written on ritual bronzes. The script included some 4000 characters with some Shang words being dropped and new ones added. It is hard to do too much comparison as the purpose of the Shang script was oracular and the Zhou's was bureaucratic. Over the 800 years of the Zhou Dynasty the script became more abstract and even less pictographic. 'Gracefulness' became the main focus of the scribes and character sizes were standardized and the layout balanced. Also unlike early Zhou inscriptions that contained 10-100 characters the later inscriptions reached over 200-300. 

The Dynasty was split up as feudal lords ruled much of the land during the period of the Eastern Zhou. The feudal lords lacked the means for monumental inscriptions and so they published their pedigrees on specially commission vessels. As a new sign of their power they wrote in a new script—the 'seal script.' This script was more convoluted than the older script, it added new strokes to add a more ornate feel to it. Likewise in southern China a script was produced that tried to accomplish the same goal by incorporating birds into the characters. Although these ornate scripts were popular they were not as practical. A simplified version of the script came under heavy use for everyday correspondences as well as official documents. This simplified script would be the basis for future scripts. With most of the writing of this time being written on bamboo slips, paper, silk, and hemp it has been near miraculous that enough samples have survived that we can have a good idea of what writing was like over 2200 years ago.